Search for The Avatar: Book 2
by irishauthor94
Summary: (Adopted from Phoenixwind) Team Avatar find themselves scattered across the One Piece world, Toph, Katara and Zuko have joined the Straw-Hats in an effort to attempt to find the rest of their friends. can they find the Avatar and return home? or will this world prove to be too much for them?
1. The Knock-up Stream

**A/N: ****Right, first things first, this is an adopted fic, The 18 chapter story I'm continuing on from can be found linked at the bottom of my profile page. I do actually have Pheonixwind's permission to continue this story, and I hope I can continue it adequately and keep the quality consistent, that being said, on with the story.**

-Mariejois-

Word had spread fast through Mariejois, an unprecedented meeting was set to take place, a meeting of the strongest forces the marines have to offer, Several high-rank marine officers including Fleet Admiral Sengoku are set to appear, the Shichibukai are also intended to appear, but with the nature of these sanctioned pirates, no-one is sure how many will present themselves, if any at all. Although the question on everyone's lips is not who will be present for the meeting, but what event on the four seas and the Grand Line could possibly prompt such a meeting?

"Red-Hair and Whitebeard?" the gravelly voice of one of five elderly men seated together rung out through the meeting chamber,

"Yes, Red Hair was the one to establish contact," the young officer knelt on the floor delivering his report, by the manner in which he spoke, one could easily sense the reverence he felt for the five men he was addressing,

"That is disturbing news, but I'm going to assume that he did not meet Whitebeard himself?" this elderly scarred man, despite his frail appearance was certainly someone to be respected.

"No, he sent one of his crew." The officer replied respectfully, "Elder, I'm concerned, these two working together for any reason could present a real problem for the Marines."

"True, but we must wait for now, they have yet to actually do anything, and Red-Hair isn't the type to act unless he's provoked." The supposed lead member of the Gorosei, a man who strongly resembled a Monk, spoke with an authority befitting his station, "Regardless. For now we have more pressing issues, notably the gap in the ranks of the Shichibukai and the pursuit of the pirate responsible for this gap, do we have any indication as to how many of the current Shichibukai will be attending this meeting?"

"None as of yet Sir, they are pirates after all, punctuality is not perhaps their greatest known trait," the young officer spoke up again,

"Dammit Crocodile," the scarred elder growled, "he's to blame, but we can't let the pirates responsible for his defeat get away with it either."

"What do we know of this 'Straw-Hat' crew?" the monk –like elder asked, this elicited a gulp from the young officer in centre of the room,

"We… we have some, new, um… information on a few members of his crew besides Roronoa Zoro, but the validity of the information is questionable and we will need to look into it more,"

"What is this information?!" the elder was quickly growing impatient with the soldier's ability to dance around the issue.

"He seems to have elemental benders on his side"  
The officer burst out the sentence in one breath. But regardless, the words spoken left the Gorosei stunned, after a few moments of silence the apparent youngest (in that he was neither bald nor did he have grey hair) member of the Gorosei spoke.

"What evidence do we have?" He inquired quietly.

"Eyewitness accounts saw two young girls fighting with a high-up member of Baroque works, one of them was clearly bending the rocks and sand around her to use as a weapon, and the other, who was slightly older, appeared to be utilizing water from a flask."

"Is it possible that they were merely devil fruit users?" said the monk-like elder.

"It is a possibility, we need more information to work on, however in my humble opinion I believe we can rule that possibility out, the powers they demonstrated could only be tied to two devil fruits in particular, the Hie-Hie no Mi for the older girl, and the Gura-Gura no Mi for the younger, as we all know, those two fruits are already taken." The officer's reply was nervous, but logically sound.

Never in all of their combined years had the Gorosei encountered a threat with this much potential, the potential to ruin the World Government, both physically and morally. "This matter requires looking into" the voice of the scarred elder echoed through their chamber, "Let it be known, Straw-Hat Luffy and his crew are now priority targets, and if these two are confirmed to be benders than they must be eliminated, immediately."

-North-East Coastline of Jaya-

"Awesome! It can fly?" the rest of the crew couldn't help but draw blanks at Luffy's reaction to their newly flight-ready ship, which now had thin white wooden wings and dorsal fins attached to its sides. Another noticeable change was the Ram figurehead. This, through various attachments, now resembled a chicken's head.

"Yeah! Masira and Shoujou made the adjustments while you were taking care of Bellamy" Usopp said, gesturing to the two leading monkeys.

"Something about this makes me feel uneasy." said Nami.

Zoro nodded his head in assent, "For once I agree with you Nami, it should have been a pigeon or a seagull. Chickens don't even know how to fly,"

"That wasn't really the point I was trying to make…" Nami deadpanned.

"Well, I like it! Mostly because it's based on one of the only birds I can usually see." Toph said, grinning.

"Fair enough." Zoro replied with a smirk.

"What are you kids waiting for?!" Cricket's shout pierced through the chatter. "Get on board, or you're going to miss your chance to get to Sky Island!"

"Thanks for everything, old man!" Luffy replies gleefully, before jumping up onto the portside bow of the ship, promptly followed by everyone else, "Set sail! To the knock-up stream!"

And so, the going merry set off, flanked by the ships of Masira and Shoujou,  
"Remember kid!" Cricket yelled from the coastline, "No-one has _ever_ disproved the existence of Sky Island!"

Luffy's only response was to grin, then chuckle in confirmation.

-North-west coastline of Jaya-

A large raft with three black sails ran parallel to the coast of the island of Jaya, on board were four men.

"Burgess! Do you see anything?" one of the men called out.

"Absolutely squat", are we even sure the kid is heading out this way?" another man who resembled a Luchador replied,

"According to folks in town, that'd be a yes, just keep a solid eye out, "The first man responded "they'll be pretty tough to follow if they get up to Sky Island, so we've got to get them soon. It's still hard to imagine a goofy kid like that could be worth 100 million Beris."

-On board the Going Merry-

"Are you okay Toph?" a worried voice broke the monotonous sound of the waves hitting below.

"Hmm?" The earth-bender, located near the stern and leaning over the edge of the ship, pulled herself up to respond.

"It's just that you were shaking a bit, and you look a little pale," Zuko added gently.

"Pale? I don't think I have context for that one Sparky." Toph joked.

"Oh, I… Sorry." Zuko replied timidly.

"Just kidding with you Zuko, and don't worry, I'm fine, just a little sea-sickness. Chopper's preparing another set of patch medicine right now." Toph replied with a half-hearted grin on her face.

"Fair enough, are you gonna be okay when we blast off into the sky though?"

"I'll be fine, Zuko. " Toph pouted, starting to get annoyed with Zuko treating her like she was fragile.

"Hey, I don't mean to act like you can't cope, but if you're having trouble, me and Katara are around, just don't forget, we're friends, and friends help each other." Zuko spoke his mind, he didn't want to offend Toph, but he felt he needed to make his point,

"I'll keep it in mind Sparky." Toph replied.

"Hey guys," Nami's voice broke into the conversation, "Masira's crew are scanning for where the Knock-up stream will strike, you might want to get to the front of the ship to be prepared."

With that, the two benders followed Nami to the bow of the ship, once there Zuko was met with the sight of Masira's diving crewmembers surfacing, each with different reports.

"There's a large current at twelve o'clock!"

"There's a large creature at eight o'clock, it might be a sea king!"

"There's wave activity at ten o'clock, moving against the current, it seems to be the formation of a whirlpool!"

Upon the third report, Masira spoke up,

"That's what we're looking for boys! Straw-Hats! Shoujou! adjust your heading to ten o'clock!"

At this point Chopper came up to Toph and handed her some more sea-sickness patches.

"Thanks Chopper, don't know what I'd do without you," said Toph gratefully,

Chopper however was now distracted by events in front of them,  
"I'm glad I got those to you." He stated, eyes widened with fear "because it looks like you're going to need them"

As the three crews followed through with Masira's orders they promptly found themselves in the centre of the ocean from hell, the ships turning into makeshift rollercoasters upon massive waves.

Katara stood at the centre of the bow of the ship attempting to bend the waves to make their ride easier and safer, although she was quickly tiring out due to the massive volumes of water which she was manipulating,

"Any idea how much longer this will take Nami?" the water-bender gasped out.

"Sorry Katara, I have no idea," the girl in question responded sympathetically. "Just try to keep that up as long as you can, it makes it much easier to stay on course"

"Navigator, what does the Log pose say?" Robin inquired.

After looking down at the device on her arm, Nami replied with excitement clear in her voice, "It says Sky Island is directly above us!"

It was at this point that the Merry crested over a wave which had been obscuring the crew's view, before them was a massive whirlpool, around sixty yards in diameter,

"You're going to need to get along the perimeter, then ride the whirlpool all the way to the centre" Masira's voice broke out over the sound of rushing water to deliver the straw hat's next instructions.

"Well… doesn't that sound like an interesting way to commit suicide…?" Zuko replied dryly.

"Luffy, not going to question your captaincy or anything, but can we please turn around?!" Usopp yelled, tears of fear forming in his eyes.

"I agree, this just sounds way too dangerous!" Katara added in, she wasn't panicking quite as much as Usopp or Nami, who was now hunkered down on one corner of the deck screeching, but she understood the nature of water, and she knew that whirlpools were not something to be messed with.

"Sorry guys, it's too late to turn back now. Look." Zoro vaguely gestured towards Luffy who was running around in circles, grinning with stars in his eyes, "Nothing can stop him when he gets like this."

"You know, I am beginning to think that Bounty-hunting on Jaya wasn't all that bad…" Zuko replied, unsure of what to make of his new captain's borderline suicidal lust for adventure.

It was at that point that the sea king the divers had mentioned earlier burst out from beneath the whirlpool, about fifteen yards ahead of the Going Merry, prompting terrified reactions from Nami, Usopp, and Chopper. Zuko, Katara and Sanji watched in fascinated horror but didn't let it take them over. Zoro, Luffy and Toph, who couldn't even see the beast in question, barely reacted at all.

"Ok, this is where we leave you, just keep riding the whirlpool and you'll be fine," Masira gave his last instructions before ordering both monkey crews to depart.

"Thanks guys! We'll bring back a souvenir from Sky Island!" Luffy yelled at the departing ships. Only just being heard over Chopper, Nami and Usopp's yells to come back and rescue them.

"Luffy, please turn back, don't you understand that all this Sky Island stuff is just make-believe?!" Usopp pleaded, sounding absolutely terrified,

"Make believe? Is that what you really think?" Luffy turned to face the sniper, sounding somewhat annoyed,

"Usopp might be right Luffy! There's no way we can survive this!" Nami corroborated Usopp's viewpoint,

"C'mon guys, stop worrying, just think, this might be our greatest adventure!" Luffy replied, the stars materializing in his eyes again.

"Is it just me, or are we picking up speed?" Toph noted, having noticed a change in the frequency of the ships vibrations.

"You guys might want to listen to Toph, and take a look out there." Said Zoro, while pointing towards the centre of the whirlpool. "We're being sucked in!"

"Don't worry Nami-swan! I'll protect you!" Sanji moved to protect Nami before promptly hitting the deck, as the Ship hit the centre of the whirlpool, with no water underneath it the ship started to plummet, before suddenly stopping, to the confusion of the crew,

"What just happened?" it was Katara who asked the question,

"No idea, one second, crazy vibrations, the next, practically none," Toph responded, once again leaning over the side of the ship to throw up,

Usopp quickly scanned the ocean around the ship. "Huh? Wha… I don't get it… where'd it go?"

Moving over to see what the long-nosed sniper was talking about Zuko looked out too. To find no signs whatsoever of the whirlpool they were just riding,

"Wait a second… the ship's vibrating like crazy again, there's something coming from below!" Toph exclaimed fearfully.

"I get it… the whirlpool sunk under the surface!" Nami replied nervously.

"HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!" a loud voice from afar broke the nervous atmosphere on board the Merry,

"Huh? Hey Zoro, look." said Luffy curiously, his second mate complied, to see a large raft with three black sails approaching, one of the sails was adorned with a jolly roger which three skulls instead of one and four bones instead of two.

"So, If it isn't Straw-Hat Luffy!" the same voice rang out again, it belonged to a robust tanned man, wearing an open white shirt and olive trousers, he had black matted hair underneath a bandana, a thin black beard and he appeared to be missing at least half of his teeth,

"What? It's that guy from Mock Town!" Nami recalled in surprise, remembering the man who gave Luffy a speech about following his dreams after their first encounter with Bellamy in Mock Town.

"Don't panic too much kid; I'm just here to collect your 100 million beri bounty!" The bearded man yelled laughing.

"Hundred-million? What are you talking about?!" Luffy yelled back.

"Don't play dumb, it says it right here!" The beard man replied, holding up two sheets of paper. "Monkey D. Luffy, 100 million beris and Pirate Hunter Roronoa Zoro, 60 million beris!"

"It's true!" Usopp confirmed, looking at the posters through binoculars. "Congrats on your new bounties, you two!"

"Wait a second, Usopp, you sure there isn't another one for me?" Sanji asked

"Um… No there isn't." Usopp replied.

"How about you look closer?" Sanji asked sinisterly.

"Alabasta must have really racked up your bounties, but… 100 million? That's crazy!" Nami began pondering every possible reason they could have for installing such a huge bounty.

"Hear that! My bounty went up, Big-time!" Luffy cheered.

"60 million's not too bad either haha!" Zoro agreed, looking proud.

"If I leave this place without racking up at least a 100 million beri bounty then I'll consider that a missed opportunity," Toph added.

"What is it with you and getting bounties?" Katara asked, annoyed.

"What is it with you and _not _getting bounties?" Toph replied with a smirk, causing Zuko and Robin to laugh, and Katara to emit a sound one might hear if they were to punch an ostrich in the throat.

"Guys! It's starting!" Another voice broke through the playful chatter, it was Shoujou, and surprisingly he and his ship were still within hearing range.

The water around the Merry was rising rapidly, with the Merry at the dead centre,

"Everyone grab on to something or get inside!" the crew scrambled, thinking quickly Luffy grabbed Toph before anchoring himself to the mast.

"Thanks Stretch," Toph said gratefully,

"No problem Rocky" Luffy replied, grinning.

"…"

"What? You use nicknames, why can't I?"

It happened instantaneously, the massive swell of water seemingly exploded, before a massive pillar of very fast moving water rose up from the centre,

The pillar sent the Going Merry flying upwards along it, and smashed the bearded man's raft to pieces.

While the rest of the Merry crew were screaming as they were blasted into the sky, Luffy was cheering.

"YEAH! To Sky Island!"

**A/N:**** So… yeah. There we go. Search for The Avatar continues! **


	2. The White Sea

**A/N: ****right, a couple of quick notes regarding updates, I have no set schedule, whatsoever, I will attempt to have at the very least two chapters a month on average, but that is by no means concrete, updates will be slightly slower at the start as I need to rewatch some of Skypeia to it down better. Another thing to note is a quick rule of my writing ("text") is speech, ('text') is thought.  
lastly I own neither One Piece or Avatar: The Last Airbender which are the intellectual properties of Eiichiro Oda and Bryan Konietzko/Michael DiMartino respectively, If I did own either or both, I would not be writing fanfiction, I'd be adding another bathroom to my sky palace made of pure gold.**

* * *

(Northwest Coast of Jaya)

On the jagged shoreline of Jaya, Montblanc Cricket was enjoying an ordinary day just like any other, He enjoyed nothing more than to sit out in the morning, enjoy the calm ocean waves, smoke a little bit and gaze upon the massive funnel of water that had just aggressively blasted his new-found acquaintances into the sky. OK, scratch that, it wasn't quite an ordinary day.

Only one thought came to the mind of the aging seafarer, 'Good luck kids, try to stay calm up there.

(The Knock-up Stream)

"What the hell is happening?" Usopp screeched, tears flowing freely from his eyes as he anchored himself around the banister of the steps leading to the ship's cabin.

"We're sailing _up_ a huge pillar of water!" Sanji shouted back, he was decidedly calmer than his sniper comrade, but still didn't seem entirely comfortable with this new development. the Ship was now moving vertically, its base running parallel to the rushing shaft of water between the sea and sky.

"This is awesome!" Luffy yelled, still anchoring himself and Toph to the mast.

"No, this is terrifying!" The small earth-bender screamed in response.

"Haha, don't worry Toph, I won't let go of you or anything." Luffy replied cheerfully, did anything faze this guy?

Meanwhile Katara had stuck her feet to the ship using ice she had bended from the knock-up stream itself,

"How is this even possible?" she asked Nami, the only person she would figure would have any idea what was happening, 'Does gravity not exist in this world?!' she added in an afterthought.

She got a response but not from whom she was expecting. As Zuko started to speak

"Just like anything on the ocean the knock-up stream must have a current, and subsequently it has wind. that, plus a lot of momentum is what's driving us upwards."

Nami and Katara just stared at him for a few seconds.

"What? I spent three years on a ship with Uncle, I just happened to learn some stuff about seafaring." Zuko added defensively.

"Yay!" Nami led out a little shriek and proceeded to hug Zuko, much to his embarrassment, "We finally have a guy on the crew who's A; somewhat normal, and B; not completely oblivious!"

"Um... thank you, ca-can you let go of me now?" Zuko asked, his face went bright red as he attempted to divert his eyes away from the girl's chest that was mere inches from his face. After Nami released him he turned to see Sanji glaring at him with eyes like daggers. "Uh… can I help you with something? Sanji?" To say that Zuko was confused was a massive understatement.

"No… nothing, nothing at all." Sanji turned away and walked away along the now horizontal front wall of the cabin.

Before Zuko had any time to question what had just happened, Zoro spoke up. (**A/N: oh… so many scan-readers are gonna be tripped up by those two names! XD)**

"Guys, we have a new problem. The ship is starting to lift off of the water!" the swordsman shouted, panic started to set in amongst the crew with those words.

"What?!" Toph yelled.

"Yeah, there's not really much we can do about it either, we're at the mercy of Mother Nature now." Zoro continued in a resigned tone.

Katara began to ponder what methods she could take to help, but short of diverting the angle of the entire pillar, which would be impossible, she couldn't think of anything. 'Damnit!' if Aang were here he'd be able to force us back down with a rush of air or something,' she thought, once again lamenting that the team had been separated upon their entry into this new terrifying world.

For the last few moments Nami had been racking her considerable nautical knowledge to think of a way to save the ship from falling, 'I've got it!'

"Sanji, Zoro! Unfurl the sails, now!" the navigator barked in a commanding tone. Upon seeing Zoro's questioning expression she continued "We need more speed, the sails will capitalize on the current, and the inertia will keep us flat and moving! Now hurry!"

The two men quickly complied, Sanji doing so enthusiastically and immediately the change in speed was notable, the Merry lifted off slightly more before levelling out.

"Yeah! We're flying!" Luffy laughed out.

"Yeah… we're flying, the one thing that makes me sick faster than being on a boat," Toph groaned as her face turned pale.

"Don't worry Toph, it won't be too much longer, we're nearly there, right Nami?" Katara said in a comforting manner.

"Yep, Skypiea should be right over those clouds there." Nami replied pointing upward, 'or was it forward?' at the gap in the clouds that the Knock-Up Stream had created.

And so the Merry continued its voyage upwards. Things became rough as the ship penetrated the cloud layer; with Chopper losing his grip at one point only to land on a net weaved out of copies of Robin's hands. Katara was holding on to the ship solidly with one arm wrapped around a railing while trying to bend as much of the cloud as possible out of their way with the other hand, particularly bending it away from Toph and Luffy, as she didn't want the water to weaken the rubber man and cause him and Toph to fall off. Eventually the Merry pierced through the peak of the clouds, and into open sky,

* * *

Thousands of metres below, Cricket watched onward as the Knock-up Stream started to dissipate. 'Ya know? I think those kids might have actually pulled it off' he thought to himself before yelling towards the sky,

"Way to go Straw-Hat! Follow your damn dreams! No-one else will follow them for you!"

* * *

A little way further out at sea, the small crew that had briefly accosted the Straw Hats, sat upon one of the few intact logs that remained of their raft.

"Well. Looks like they got away!" the bearded leader laughed to himself.

"How can you just laugh that off captain?! We just lost 160 million beris!" his Luchador looking crewmate replied angrily.

"Easy Burgess, we'll run into them again, and next time they won't get away." The jovial captain responded.

* * *

Back above the clouds the Going Merry had finally come to a halt, floating on a canvas of white.

The crew on board were all In varying states of consciousness, Usopp being completely out of it.

"Well, that was horrible." Toph mumbled, as she attempted to stand.

"It could have gone better, I agree." Zuko added as he too stood up, quickly noting that, like him, the rest of the crew was breathing hard and looking drained.

"Seriously, what just happened? Is everyone alright?" Zoro asked, even he appeared to be struggling somewhat. The response was generally just affirmative grunts, that being all that most members of the crew could muster, with the exception of…

"Wow! Look at this place! It's amazing! It's so white!" The captain of the vessel appeared none the worse for wear.

"Yep, nothing fazes him whatsoever." Toph laughed while still looking haggard.

"If we ever run into anything that puts him down, remind me to run for my life, okay guys?" Katara added, as she stumbled into a standing position. She then proceeded to dry off the other members clothes using her water-bending to a host of murmured thanks.

"Guys, I mean it! come look at this!" finally responding to their captain, the rest of the crew gathered near Luffy on the starboard side of the ship and with the exception of Toph, looked outward, what they saw stunned them.

"It… it's just a canvas of clouds? How the hell aren't we falling through?" a flabbergasted Nami asked.

"Clouds float and boats float, so _we_ float, no?"Luffy responded with a grin.

"I don't think it's quite that simple Captain." Robin said the same thing that came to the entire crew's minds.

It was at this point that Usopp woke up and started screaming, having seen the sheet of clouds surrounding the ship. He immediately asked Nami what was happening and where they were, she told him that they were basically floating on a sea of clouds, before checking the Log Pose.

"Wait, the Log Pose is still pointing up… what the hell?" She pondered, utterly perplexed by this latest development.

"Well clearly Skypiea is up even higher than we currently are, I guess we still have some more distance to travel, so shall we get moving?" Robin proposed.

"I think we should try to get our bearings first. We still have no idea where we're going." Katara shot back, sounding slightly irritated; Before Toph lightly hit her with an elbow.

"Play nice Sugar-Queen! Whining at her isn't gonna help anything." The earth-bender added, Katara noted that she had looked increasingly uncomfortable since the revelation that there was no solid land in sight.

While she was sympathetic to her friend's potential plight, the thought of a place with this much water made her feel a lot more confident and being honest, it made her feel powerful, like this was a place where she could actually compete with the juggernauts of this world.

Usopp having grown bored of all the navigational talk, decided that this would be a decent opportunity to try something new, and showing some uncharacteristic bravery he dove into the sea of clouds, to the cheers of Luffy and Chopper. Not one minute later he was being reeled back in by the combined efforts of Luffy and Robin as he had managed to swim straight through the cloud layer, which evidently did not have a solid bottom. As he was being reeled back though, it became clear that he wasn't returning alone.

As Luffy's hand returned back through the cloud layer with Usopp, it was promptly followed by two massive creatures, one was an elongated giant blue eel, and the other was a giant octopus-like _thing._ And _both_ were several times the size of the Going Merry.

The two creatures set upon the Merry immediately, but were quickly stopped by a flurry of kicks from Sanji against the Eel, and a fast moving blade-like jet of water from Katara to dispatch the Octopus while Luffy placed an unconscious Usopp down on the deck.

"What? Why… do… I feel…so…tired?" Katara asked immediately afterwards, her breathing had become very heavy, even the simple flourishes needed to summon up the water from the clouds beneath her then focus and direct it at the creature had severely tired her out.

"I think it might be the air up here, it's much thinner, and that makes it harder to breath" Sanji theorized, he too looked to be feeling the effects of exerting himself

"That's probably it, so take it easy you guys, at least until you get used to it." Chopper called from the side of the ship, where he was using the binoculars to scan for any signs of life or anything, to help them find their way. Behind him the conversation turned towards Sanji's cooking abilities, as Luffy requested that Sanji attempt to cook the large eel creature, much to the rest of the crew's amusement. It was at that point which Chopper finally spotted something. What looked to be another ship, he was about to inform the others of this discovery, when the ship suddenly burst into flames. Chopper immediately attempted to warn the crew of imminent danger.

"Guys, there-was-a-ship-and-then-it-split-BOOM-and-then-a -guy-was-flying away and-" Chopper was interrupted from his incoherent rambling by a light knock on the head.

"Chopper, calm down, no-one can tell what you're even saying." Toph had bonked him on the back of the head to attempt to get some clarity out of him.

"I think I know what he's talking about anyway!" Zoro said sharply before putting one hand towards his swords, it was immediately clear why. "There's someone out there!"

Out on the cloud-ocean, what appeared to be a man wearing a large tribal mask was gliding towards the Merry very quickly.

"Hey, stop! What do you want?" Sanji demanded.

"To destroy you!" the masked figure responded.

"Well…crap…" Zuko's statement adequately summed up the situation.

In mere moments the man landed on the Merry then proceeded to lay waste to the crew's best fighters, promptly kicking Sanji flying into the wall of the cabin, before backhanding Zoro halfway across the ship, Zuko responded first by launching a ball of fire at the assailant. To everyone's surprise the flames he launched were absolutely pitiful. Barely even embers, and to make matters worse he received a strong gut punch for his trouble, winding him and knocking him to the ground,  
Luffy stepped up next and threw a strong right hook, which the man weaved away from, before responding by slamming the rubberized man's head into the deck. He stepped forward towards the weaker members of the crew as well as the defenceless Toph who had been pulled out of range by Robin.

Cracking his knuckles, he looked set to continue his rampage before he was hit and sent tumbling towards the side of the ship by a large wave of water. He looked towards the girl who had launched the counter-attack.

"Stay away from my friends, you ass!" Katara yelled. She had bent up a large amount of water from the clouds below, and was now keeping it moving around her body from shoulder to hip in a ring shape.

"Wow. It must be serious business if Katara's using bad language." Toph cracked; joking aside, she was worried; she had been able to gather that the crew was under attack and she only wished that she could help, but on a boat surrounded by clouds she was effectively helpless.

With one fluid motion Katara launched the water at the attacker in the form of a whip, however with a flourish of air that seemed to be coming from devices on his feet he easily jumped clear of the attack, then clear of the ship, before pulling a tube like device from his shoulder and aiming it at the Going Merry.

'What is that? It almost looks like… a small…cannon, oh... oh crap.' Katara immediately moved to form a defence, but she was already getting tired, having still not adjusted to the altitude yet. Luckily for her and the Straw-Hats her last ditch defence wasn't needed, as the masked man was promptly intercepted by another mysterious person.

"Leave them be, you fiend!" came the yell from what appeared to be an old man in very heavy armour riding a large pink bird, he had come out of nowhere and attempted to spear the masked man on his lance. After a short encounter, the masked man fled and the armoured man descended down towards the Merry.

"Are you all alright?" the man asked in a kindly voice.

"I think so." Katara briefly scanned the members of the crew who had fallen; they all seemed to be recovering.

"Not that we're not thankful or anything, but, who are you?" Nami was the one to ask the question which they were all pondering,

"My name is Gan Fall and I am the Sky Knight." The man replied proudly.

**A/N: ****Right, another chapter down quickly, so I hope you all enjoyed. Not sure if I'm maybe being a bit too long-winded at this point, because I've not even covered the content of two full episodes yet. And as much as I love to write this story, I really don't want to create 450+ chapters each of about 3000 words. (That would put my eventual word count for the entire story at over 1.3 million FFS…) so maybe I'll condense the story at least a little bit more, as everyone here already knows it (why would you be reading One Piece fanfiction if you didn't Know the one piece story?) but I'll keep the same level of detail for the non-canon parts (everything involving the benders, a few side stories, and the post-whitebeard war stuff.)**

**Regardless. I hope you all enjoyed. Please leave reviews, and have a good day.**


	3. Skypiea and the Earth-less Earth-bender

**A/N: ****Now, I don't know when this chapter will end up going up, because the A/N is the first thing I write (kind of as a way to collect myself a bit) but honestly? At the moment I feel like I could upload ten or eleven chapters more before Christmas, I'm just enjoying writing this so damn much.**

**So I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it.**

**One Piece is the property of Eiichiro Oda.  
Avatar: The Last Airbender is the property of Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino.**

**So, on with the story.**

* * *

**(**Middle of the White Sea**)**

"Sky Knight?" Toph asked dryly.

"Yes indeed, young lady. And for a price of 5 million extols I can offer you all a safety whistle. To help survive the thugs that lurk throughout the white sea." Gan Fall held up a small brass whistle in his palm,

After the Straw-Hats expressed confusion as to what the Knight was talking about he began to elaborate, mentioning that there was indeed another way to reach the White Sea, other than via the Knock-up Stream. This prompted Nami to start yelling at Luffy for apparently needlessly risking their lives. He also told them that Extols were the currency up on the White Sea, after that, the old man left them with a safety whistle to call him in case of trouble, and then he departed.

"He really didn't tell us all that much, did he?" Katara noted.

"Not really, we still have no idea where to go." Zuko assented, "Glad to know we have some backup though, because this thin air makes us a lot weaker." He continued, before a thought came to his mind, he had remembered how ineffective his bending had been in that last fight, and after warning the others of what he was doing he promptly dropped into a stance and attempted to shoot another burst of fire from his right hand, to the bemusement of Katara and Toph.

Once again, it was merely sparks and embers. Zuko sighed before deciding to try again, putting both arms together then crouching downward he took a deep breath, before quickly rising upward, shooting both arms forward and simultaneously exhaling. The result was much stronger. As a ball of flame about 3 feet in diameter shot outward.

Luffy and Chopper cheered, having not seen fire-bending on that scale before, but Zuko still looked worried and Katara and Toph knew exactly why, that attack was nowhere _near_ as strong as it should have been. Katara in particular remembered seeing that one move produce a 3 metre thick flame that had a range of about 10 metres when they had fought under Ba-Sing-Se.

"What's wrong Zuko? That was good!" Luffy cheered, Noting the dour expression on Zuko's face.

"That was about the usual amount of fire I can bring up with a punch, it takes way more effort to make strong flames up here." Zuko groaned.

"It must be the air." Nami replied, when Zuko looked towards her seemingly wanting her to elaborate she continued. "The air is much thinner up here. Flame is dependent on oxygen, when you deprive a flame of oxygen you snuff it out, so thinner air means weaker flames."

"Great." Zuko groaned again, putting a palm to his face. "Sorry guys, but if we run into problems up here I don't know how much help I'll be."

"Ha. Don't worry sparky. I'll protect you." Toph replied, clearly loving that she wasn't the only one who would have difficulty bending up here.

While this discussion had been going on Zoro and Robin, with the consent of Luffy had decided on their heading, going towards what appeared to be some sort of massive waterfall on the horizon.  
After heading there and finding a large gateway between them and the waterfall they were accosted by an odd little old lady, with a camera. To the crew's amazement she appeared to have wings, she revealed that there was a 1 billion extol per person price to pay per person in order to go beyond the gate. But oddly she also implied that they didn't need to pay it, as she couldn't stop them.

This immediately perplexed the crew and put Toph in particular on edge, as through her parents she had learned a little bit of business sense. And after the ship had been lifted and carried up the waterfall by what appeared to be a massive lobster. And later, after they had arrived on a higher layer of the White Sea, she raised the point.

"Why put a toll on something if you don't enforce it?" she asked the crew in general. "You'd never make any money on it if people can just opt out, so it's pointless!"

"I don't know, maybe it's just a prank?" Katara replied hopefully.

"Or. They enforce it later." Zoro added, notably more pessimistic about the situation.

The dark conversation was interrupted by a piercing yell from Luffy.

"There it is! There's Skypiea!" Luffy shouted, bouncing up and down on his heels.

And he was right. Before them lay an island unlike any they had seen before, with a surface weaved of thick white clouds, marble building sat upon this surface surrounded sparsely by palm trees.

As the crew hit the shoreline of the island Katara immediately noticed a problem. Zuko noticed it too 'how well does cloud transmit a vibration?'

Luffy was the first one to disembark, taking a deep breath of the air, before cheering loudly, he was closely followed by an eager Toph, who stopped dead once she landed on the shore.

Katara let out a sigh upon seeing her friend's suddenly downtrodden expression. As she knew exactly what was causing it.

"Damnit… guys, i have a problem." The small earth-bender surprised her two fellow benders with the immediate confession, was she really that comfortable with the Straw-Hats already that she was willing to admit when she was incapacitated around them?

"What's up Toph?" Usopp, asked, having disembarked immediately after alongside Chopper, he was still looking gleefully at the sights of Skypiea before he turned towards who he was addressing, upon seeing the look on the girl's face, he immediately changed tact, "Are you okay?" he asked, sounding concerned.

"Yeah, slight issue though," Toph nervously scratched the back of her neck, "it seems this stuff doesn't transmit vibrations, it like…absorbs them or something, So… I'm… I'm completely blind up here." Toph declared, her voice cracking slightly throughout.

"Oh…" Usopp really didn't know what to say to that. How could he really say anything about that? He had no experience of what it was like to not be able to see, so he couldn't really attempt to cheer her up for fear of trivializing it he knew that even on the ship while her sight was severely diminished it was still barely there, as wood transmitted vibrations, even if they didn't travel from plank to plank.

"C'mon Toph, I'll take you further inland." Chopper suddenly appearing morose, transformed into his quadrupedal form and helped the girl to navigate.

Katara disembarked to go speak to Toph, only to be stopped by Luffy of all people.

"I think she wants to be alone for a minute." Luffy noted in one of his rare moments of insight.

"I still think I should talk to her, though." Katara responded politely, "don't worry I know how to speak to her when she's like this, she visited the south pole with us once, and it was pretty much the same circumstance as now."

Luffy just nodded, and Katara ran onward to her friend. He then turned to address the rest of the Crew.

"Let's try and make this stay as short as possible, as much fun as we might have here, it's not worth it if one of our Nakama is suffering for it." Luffy retained his more serious manner, but only for a few moments more. "Now, let's have some fun while we're here!" Luffy reverted to goofy mode.

He and Usopp proceeded to start playing in the cloud beach, being joined shortly after by Chopper, who had guided Toph to the head of the beach at the base of a palm tree where she now sat, speaking with Katara, They all figured, quite rightly, that moping about Toph's plight wouldn't help them whatsoever.

Back near the Merry, Zuko, having grabbed a few things from among the stuff he stowed on the ship, was approaching Zoro, who was merely pacing along the beach

"Hey," the fire-bender led in, "do you mind if we talk for a minute."

"I guess not." Zoro replied stoutly, "What's on your mind?" he sat down on the beach and prompted Zuko to do the same.

"I was wondering." Zuko began as he too took a seat on the solid cloud beside zoro ' Solid cloud? still an odd concept the wrap your head around.' "My fire-bending isn't always going to be available to me in this world, the fight with that masked guy made that abundantly clear, so… would-you-accept-me-as-your-student-in-swordsmansh ip?" Zuko shoved out the last part of his monologue as quickly as he could.

"No." was the swordsman's reply.

"But why? Don't worry I can already use swords, you wouldn't be teaching me from scratch." at this point Zuko unravelled one of the packs he had been carrying with him to reveal Dual Dao swords similar to the ones he owned back home, which after a particularly decent bounty, he had purchased in Jaya, "I just need to become stronger with them to survive this world!"

"I am not a master, so I won't accept a student. I am still learning myself, it would be a fallacy." At this point Zuko seemed crestfallen, but Zoro wasn't finished, "I will, however, train with you, not as teacher and student, but as equals!" Zoro finished with a grin.

"Right!" Zuko responded with a warm smile of his own.

At that point halfway across the beach Luffy had started a 'cloudball' fight, the substance being solid but soft, almost like snow, he continued to pelt 'cloudballs' at Usopp and Chopper. Who had teamed up and were returning fire, when a yell broke through the sounds of the mock-battle.

"Just Shut up Katara!" at the head of the beach, Katara and Toph were now both standing, a couple of metres apart. "I don't need you to recap that I've effectively been useless since we came to this world, I know it already, now will you just stop it and leave me alone?!"

"That wasn't what I was saying at all Toph." Katara responded, trying not to raise her voice, "I'm just saying that I understand if you're frustrated at the moment, going from a ship to a desert, then back to a ship, then to an island not made of earth. It's just a pretty unlucky set of circumstances."

"Oh an unlucky circumstance, it's not like I have any concept of that! Not like I was born to an unlucky circumstance or anything!" Toph continued, unlike Katara, she had no issues with raising her voice.

That caused Katara to flinch as her choice of words came back to bite her.

Chopper moved towards the pair to go attempt to calm them down, before being stopped by Usopp.

"Nope, don't go there Chopper, two things you should learn pretty quickly about girls are, one; never argue with them, and two; never interrupt two of them _when_ they are arguing, besides, I get the feeling that Toph needs to talk this out. Katara probably knows that too." The sniper said, prompting Chopper to sit back down, looking somewhat hapless.

"I was fully blind for 7 years before I learned to earth-bend!" Toph continued to rant, never losing her steam. "I can cope with it! What I can't cope with is your interfering!"

"My interfering?!" Katara lost all semblance of wanting to keep the argument toned down as she finally shouted in reply, sounding somewhat hurt.

"Yes. You _love_ interfering in people's business," Toph refused to relent. Not realizing or not caring that she was hurting her friend. "Like when Robin joined the crew, you question _everything_ she does! You just refuse to let people deal with things themselves and chart their own course!"

Katara paused, unable to think of anything to say at that point. 'Am I really that controlling?' she thought, horrified.

Prompted by the lack of a reply Toph stomped off toward where she had heard Zuko and Zoro talking. Leaving Katara to think about what had just occurred. Not thinking or not caring if she would have difficulty getting there.

A little while later the crew experienced their first encounter with a citizen of Skypiea, a beautiful blonde woman in a pink dress, who, like every Sky Island dweller they had encountered thus far, had white wings matching the classic depiction of an angel. The woman's name was Conis and she promptly introduced the crew to some of the eccentricities of Skypiea, before a man, revealed to be her father, Pagaya, arrived on an odd half-boat half-bike-like device. Which Katara noted, seemed to be propelled by a similar device to the ones their masked attacker in the White Sea, had been wearing on his feet.

After a short talk Conis invited the crew up to their house for food, Nami declining as she wanted to attempt to drive the device, which was apparently called a waver. As the group, sans Nami, walked up a very large staircase, with Toph being guided by Chopper, who she had instructed to keep her a fair distance from Katara, Pagaya explained various details of Sky Island life to the Straw-Hats, such as the two types of clouds that made up the island, the sea clouds and the solid clouds which could be cut and shaped, to make things like the staircase beneath them and even their homes.

"No earth whatsoever up here? Huh?" Toph asked Pagaya, sounding exasperated.

"Earth?" Pagaya responded sounding bemused, wondering if the girl was referring to what the Skypiean's called Vearth, but he did not want to open that can of sky-worms.

"I thought not,"

Once they got to the house, Sanji moved to help Pagaya in the kitchen while Conis entertained the guests in the living room, at which point, upon being prompted by Katara to explain how the Wavers worked, she explained Dials to the Straw-Hats. Showing off various types of odd shells which served various purposes, from Tone Dials which recorded sound, much to the Straw-Hats general wonderment, to breath dials which stored air currents and then released them, supposedly the largest of these dials were used in Wavers.

She also mentioned flame dials which could store heat inside them to be used for purposes such as cooking, and even Vision dials which could record everything the user sees. All these explanations continued to 'wow' the Straw Hats, with Chopper exclaiming that he suddenly wanted to live up in the sky islands, the response from Toph to that, was a resounding negative, when Conis asked what Toph found dissatisfying about Skypiea, seemingly offended, Zuko briefly explained her blindness but didn't mention her earth-bending, just saying that she had a way of feeling where she was going that didn't work on clouds, he didn't elaborate any further but Conis appeared to accept it and offered her sympathies. the group had near-unanimously agreed to mostly keep their bending on the down-low, especially around new people after knowing of the supposed lockdown on bending that the world government enforced, according to Smoker.

* * *

While this was happening, Nami was still wondering out on the Waver, she had quickly mastered the art of driving the craft, and was thoroughly enjoying herself, but when she saw the crests of trees on the horizon, she quickly moved to investigate.

* * *

Back at the house, Sanji and Pagaya set down several plates.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Dinner is served; here we have Sky-Island Lobster with special sauce and a side of several varieties of Sky-Island fruit which I can't pronounce." Sanji announced formally. After setting the dishes down to promptly be devoured, mostly by Luffy and Toph, he moved towards a balcony overlooking the sea which they had arrived from. And after briefly scanning the horizon he raised a concern to the rest of the crew.

"Hey guys, I can't see Nami anywhere." Sanji sounded concerned as he said this.

"Yeah, neither can I." Toph had quickly moved towards the balcony.

"Exactly, maybe we should-" Sanji paused, realizing who had just said that, and what she had just said, "Got to admit, that was a good one." He finally said in a defeated tone.

"I aim to please." Toph generally seemed happy that she could still have a little bit of fun, even if it was slightly at the expense of her crewmates.

"Don't worry about it anyway Sanji, she's probably just gone out a bit too far, Nami's a smart girl though, she can take care of herself." Usopp cut into the conversation.

"I'm concerned Father, do you think she's okay? If she strayed _there_ she could run into trouble." Conis added, and she did sound genuinely concerned, which Luffy noticed.

"What are you talking about?" the rubber-man asked.

"And what's this place you're talking about?" Zuko had noted how Conis had emphasized the word 'there.'

"Within Waver range of Skypiea there's an island called Upper Yard, where normal citizens aren't allowed to tread." Conis explained.

"What's so bad about this place? Is it dangerous?" Katara asked.

"It's sacred ground," Conis continued, she then paused, seemingly searching for the right words.

"It's the island, where God lives."

"Huh?" Toph said roughly what the entire crew was thinking,

* * *

"What in the world?" Nami had to pinch herself, as she gazed upon the most gigantic trees she had ever witnessed standing over 100 feet tall before her. And unlike the palm trees she had left behind, these trees were planted on solid ground, actual soil, and not solid cloud. Before her stood a massive island, before her stood Upper Yard.

* * *

**A/N ****was thinking of ending the chapter here, but you know what? I think it's about time I started boosting chapter length beyond 3000 words. So, let's go.**

* * *

Conis moved onward to explain about the God she had spoken of, who was supposedly named Enel, she told the Straw-Hats that Enel was essentially omniscient, that he could see everything. This sparked a brief discussion in which Toph, Luffy and Zoro all denied that they believed in any form of God, Katara and Zuko were roughly in line with them, but not to the same extreme, having not seen anything that could compete with the denizens of the spirit world in terms of power and insight.

Conis then continued to explain that Upper yard was the land of God, and that no-one of the citizens of Skypiea had set foot there or seen Enel himself.

* * *

Back out at the edge of Upper Yard, Nami still stood still in wonder at the sight before her,

"Those trees, how'd they get so big? And how did so much rock and soil get up here? Well, I should tell Toph about this place at least, she might enjoy coming here for a bit." The Navigator pondered.

* * *

"So it's a forbidden island?" Luffy asked Conis innocently.

Hearing the tone of his friend's voice Usopp turned to see Luffy's eyes replaced with bright sparks.

"NO! No Luffy! Stop getting excited, we're not going to Upper Yard!" Usopp's tone in spite of his words was more pleading than commanding.

"Well I thought God was supposed to be all kind and stuff, would he really mind if we just visited his Island?" Luffy responded in a surprisingly intelligent manner.

"No." Pagaya spoke next, futilely attempting to discourage the young man "there is a hefty punishment for stepping into God's domain, no-one to visit Upper Yard has ever returned!"

The crew's eyes respectively widened, Sanji immediately running to the balcony to attempt to yell for Nami to come back,

"Well that's it then, we're going there just to save Nami." Luffy's eyes still possessed that 'adventure sparkle'.

"Ha, I don't even need my seismic sense to tell he's lying." Toph joked.

* * *

Nami was now scoping out the coast of this massive island, having heard voices coming from further up the shoreline she ventured towards them, the voices it turned out were being emitted from a Tone Dial, while Nami didn't know the specifics she hazarded a guess that this was some form of sound recorder, the recordings were extremely morbid, with the last recording seemingly including the death of the user at the hands of what he referred to as God.

She was interrupted from her isolated thoughts by the sounds of someone running along the shoreline, yelling for help, he was being chased by a variety of four oddballs, all of which seemed to be competing to land a kill on this poor man. For a moment it appeared he had escaped, only for him to be suddenly engulfed in a massive blue pillar of lightning, Nami moved out of range immediately and hid behind a tree root that was descending from the shoreline. She overheard the 4 men talking, supposedly about how the target had been dealt with, and that there were 10 more illegal entrants now on Skypiea, Nami deduced that the Straw-Hats were the 10 people In question, and that by not paying the entrance fee, they had entered illegally. Waiting for an opportunity she quickly fled, attempting to return and warn the crew of the potential danger.

* * *

The crew in question were preparing to disembark, with Luffy, Chopper, Usopp, Sanji, Katara and Zuko still on the shore. While Toph, Robin, and Zoro were on the ship,

"Wait. Looks like we have company." Luffy pointed across the beach toward what appeared to be a platoon of men approaching them crawling like crabs.

"What," Zuko started

"The," Katara continued.

"Hell?" Usopp finished.

The platoon came to a halt in front of them then stood.

The apparent leader of the men looked towards the crew then spoke.

"Well look what we have here! These must be the blue sea dwellers who have illegally entered Skypiea!" at those words from the leader, Zoro, Toph and Robin dropped down onto the beach to see what was going on, Toph requiring a hand from the latter.

The Leader who went by the name and title of Captain McKinley proceeded to tell the crew that by not paying the toll at the gate when they entered Skypiea they had effectively entered illegally. At which point Toph and Zoro bragged at how they both knew something fishy was going on.

The captain continued to elaborate that their punishment would be to pay ten times the original fee, putting the total at 10 billion extols per person, or a grand total, of 100 billion extols, which was apparently equivalent to 10 million beris. The Straw-Hats promptly expressed outrage at the massive fee.

"This is your first warning! The White Beret's work for Mighty Enel himself, arguing with us will only increase your debts!" The Captain appeared annoyed at the crew's persistence.

Usopp then tried to talk sense into the group,

"Look for now, we should stay here, if we leave, we might miss Nami, she's bound to have some beris stashed somewhere, so she can pay our way out, and in the meantime while we're waiting for her, let's try not to upset these White Berets." the long-nosed man pointed out analytically.

However it wasn't long before tensions escalated, Luffy had brought out the damaged waver they had obtained from the salvage ship that fell from the sky, asking if Pagaya could possibly repair it, after one look at the craft, McKinley elevated the crime level of the Straw-Hats from level 11 to level 10, apparently due to criminal damage. Then promptly from level 10 to level 9 after asserting that the Blue Sea dwellers did not use wavers, assuming that the craft was stolen.

This was elevated to level 8 soon after when Usopp caught a supposedly endangered fish. McKinley explained that for every crime level they rose, their Debt rose by 10%, putting the figure at 13 million beris At this Zoro was about to lose patience, but it was the White Berets next action, which sealed things. As they set off who was perhaps the most volatile member of the crew at present time.

"Hey captain! That short girl there, I think she's blind," one of the berets noted. While pointing at Toph, who was sitting down next to Chopper

"Well spotted corporal, increase the fine by 20% due to disability tax" the Captain spoke in an authoritative, but also, oddly uncomfortable manner, did he have his problems with carrying out this rather more unethical order? Regardless, his words sparked reactions of outrage from the Straw-Hats, Pagaya and Conis.

"That's disgraceful!" Sanji yelled. Looking absolutely livid.

"Come again?" Toph asked, stood before stepping forward, the Straw-Hats stepped aside to let her pass, Katara couldn't help but note the malice in Toph's voice. And while the two were not on the best terms for now, she too felt outrage on behalf of her friend, the one thing Toph hated more than being perceived as fragile was burdening others.

"Disabilities such as blindness are a massive inconvenience on Skypiea, Enel and the priests do not tolerate them," the captain replied, again he sounded uncomfortable, particularly when mentioning these supposed priests.

"One more time?" Toph spoke again still walking forward toward the captain, this time her voice had a deceptively sweet, inquisitive front to it, the crew noticed that she was getting closer and closer to the captain.

"She appears to be hard of hearing too, that's not gonna raise the Tax but GA-" the captain was promptly interrupted by a strong punch to the stomach, he promptly deflated and fell to the ground.

"Thanks for letting me follow your voice, genius!" Toph grunted.

"You… just rose up… by 4 levels." The captain groaned from the floor before attempting to stagger to his feet

Before any further action could be taken Nami appeared approaching the beach,

"Nami! Thank god!" Usopp screamed, "We need you to fork up…" Usopp performed the maths in his head quickly adding in the bogus disability tax and the 40% increase of crime level both instigated by Toph. "Yeah we need you to fork up 19 million beris!" the Sniper only realized after what he was asking after saying it out loud, he was asking Nami, the stingiest person he had ever heard of, to fork over 19 million beris, more money than most people saw over an entire lifetime, 'Oh… this isn't gonna end well.'

And it didn't.

Nami in a blind rage slammed the Waver into the recovering captain who had only just returned to his feet, instantly sending him flying. As she did so, she was shouting "That's way too steep!"

Her actions proved to be the powder keg for the most one-sided battle in the White Beret's history.

"You have been found guilty of the level 5 crime of assaulting the White Berets, your punishment will be DEATH!" The Captain staggered to his feet before delivering the declaration.

He then signalled his men to attack, they fired arrows which appeared to emit solid clouds, which the berets then proceeded to skate on using the same devices that the masked attacker from the White Sea had worn, however they quickly had the proverbial rug pulled out from under them.

"This is what you get for insulting a friend of mine!" Katara screamed, immediately dissipating the clouds they were riding on, knocking most of the men to the ground. She then set upon them using a whip weaved out of water, using it to quickly knock a few of the Berets unconscious.

The rest of the men were being effortlessly dispatched by the Straw-Hats. When one attempted to attack a defenceless Toph with a sword while yelling a battle cry, she dodged judging by the sound but he had followed up with another swing which cut the girl's cheek, the man then found his arm twisted around behind his back by two Robin-arms that had sprouted from his shoulder. He was then knocked unconscious by a spark-loaded punch from Zuko.

"Toph, get behind me." The fire-bender commanded, and Toph begrudgingly complied, not really having a choice in the matter as she wiped a few drops of blood from her cheek.

Zuko protecting Toph wasn't really necessary, as the battle ended soon after, almost as soon as it began.

"Well that was underwhelming." Zuko noted.

"It even _sounded_ underwhelming." Toph agreed.

"You idiots don't know what you've done!" the Captain grunted out from the ground having taken a solid punch to the face from Luffy, while the guy was an ass, it was still rather impressive that he was even conscious after being hit by Toph, a Waver, and Luffy in quick succession.

The crew members all turned towards him, waiting for him to clarify his statement,

"You are now level 2 criminals! To be dealt with by the priests of Upper Yard themselves!"

**A/N ****and that's a wrap. Phew, well I managed to cut down the Chapter to episode ratio! I even cut down the word count to episode ratio, and I feel I did the story justice, so yay that's good.**

**Going to quickly address something that was asked in a review (I won't usually do this in the story I prefer to PM to answer questions, but this person used a guest account) honestly this is a good time to address this**

** Aztec 13 NO, THIS IS NOT A "ZUTARA" STORY. I have nothing against the potential of the pairing itself, but nearly every time I see "Zutara" it's usually accompanied by writing somewhere between substandard and AWFUL, mostly due to obsessive emo Zuko fangirls (who completely ignore his character arc and just write him as a stereotypical emo) being the writers, the fact that you asked only "is this a Zutara story?" without addressing the content of the story whatsoever in your "review" annoys me, perhaps irrationally so, but still.**

**Right. Hope I didn't offend anyone with that rant, just felt I needed to get that one off my chest, please feel free to leave reviews and even make suggestions in them, collaborative work can lead to great things.**

**Back on topic, Only canon pairings will be at all present in this story, and even then they will be extremely minimal. I am not a romance writer. I'm an adventure writer, not saying the two are mutually exclusive but I do not think much of my ability towards writing romance. End of story.**

**Anyway. Hope you enjoyed. and a good day to all of you.****  
**


	4. Trials and Sacrifices

**A/N:**** Right, nothing much to say for this one that hasn't already been said, So, hope you guy enjoy the chapter.**

**One Piece is the property of Eiichiro Oda.  
Avatar: The Last Airbender is the property of Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino.**

McKinley's declaration was met by varied reactions from the people who were present to hear it. with Nami, Usopp, Conis, Pagaya and Chopper reacting with fear, While the rest of the crew reacted with something between indifference and mild interest.

Luffy even seemed excited, thinking that this was finally the opportunity for adventure that he had been waiting for. While Usopp spoke with Pagaya and Conis, having suddenly realized that the Straw-Hats had no idea how they were going to return to the Blue Sea. Nami was trying to discourage Luffy from his 'adventure' mode.

Soon after, the crew decided to disembark, not yet having a definite heading but knowing that they couldn't stay where they were after incurring the wrath of the local authorities. However Luffy had other ideas.

"Hey Old man, is it alright if we go eat what's left over from lunch?" Luffy asked, obviously referring to the leftover dishes from their earlier meal.

When Pagaya consented, Luffy asked Sanji if he could also cook them some more food for the trip, Sanji, in a masterstroke of an idea, asked Katara and Zuko to join them, figuring that someone who could control temperatures and fire, and someone who could control and move liquids would be incredibly useful for quick food preparation. Usopp went along too, complaining of feeling absolutely famished.

Nami however led the rest of the crew, Robin, Zoro, and Chopper onto the Going Merry, to prepare to depart, to her surprise Toph opted to follow the crew onto the Merry rather than follow her bending companions, Nami figured that she knew the reason why.

"It kind of got swept aside earlier, but that argument earlier was pretty bad, are you two gonna be okay?" Nami asked Toph while they started to prepare for departure. She was careful with her words, as she knew that Toph would be pretty easy to set off at the moment.

Toph, who was sat with her back against the cabin wall, turned her head downward for a moment before she replied.  
"I'm just sick of her always acting like i can't look after myself, I know that at times like now it's kind of true, but still." Toph replied sounding dejected, "I know that she just cares about me, she looks after all of her friends, she's like the den mother of our group back home." Toph continued as Chopper sat down beside her and put a paw on her shoulder.

"I understand that, you just don't want people to treat you like you're a burden." Robin said in an understanding tone. She had somewhat of a connection with the blind earth-bender, not being used to the concept of people sticking up for her and trusting her so readily.

"That's just how my parents treated me, and that's why I left them behind." Toph admitted sounding angry as she mentioned her parents, but Nami also noticed a tinge of regret in there somewhere. Zoro who had originally been asleep, had popped an eye open and was now listening intently to the young girl.

"I promised myself when I left; that I would _never_ be a burden to the people I travel with." Toph shook herself free of those thoughts and suddenly spoke with new resolve, "And this place makes that difficult, but that doesn't mean I'm going to sit back and not help out." She hopped up before moving over to where she knew the anchor was hanging from and started to use her metal-bending on the chain to allow her to lift the heavy object out of the Solid cloud it was embedded in.

At this Zoro smiled, 'I knew this kid was made of tougher stuff.'

"I know Katara's just looking out for me, we'll sort things out when she gets back." Toph added, genuinely looking more cheerful now. She then decided that even if she couldn't earth-bend, she could still practice her earth-bending form. she stepped to the centre of the deck and began moving through stances, throwing kicks and punches at the air.

Zoro observed her form, surprised to see the wood beneath her feet give way a lot every time she stomped a foot down, something which seemed to be very intrinsic to her fighting style, the wood wasn't damaged but the way it was moving suggested that Toph had some fairly impressive physical strength, he then remembered the punch she had put down McKinley with, the guy was three times her size and had martial training, to put someone like that to the ground with one punch. even if it was a sucker punch was incredible. her physical strength wasn't within a country's distance of himself, the idiot cook or Luffy, or even Chopper, but still impressive none-the-less. It was probably a result of the stubborn element she was known for bending. He had made similar observations about Katara's bending when he saw it, she seemed to not possess as much strength as Toph, but the precision and fluidity of her movement were something else entirely.

Robin was also making the comparison and for her, it was like comparing a drummer to a pianist, one was all about the tempo, solidity and the strength of each beat, the other was about the movements that flow into each other, movements that lead to a flowing tune.

It was at that point that Conis arrived; delivering information regarding a current that could take the Straw-Hats back down to the Blue Sea, to the delight of Nami. And that she would help them navigate to it. Toph reckoned that she sounded somewhat uncomfortable, but she then dismissed it as Conis just being worried of the repercussions of helping fugitives. Robin had come to a similar conclusion but hadn't dismissed it as quickly as Toph had. It was at that point that she asked a question which she had sat on for quite a while.

"So what is it that makes Upper Yard so special to Enel anyway?" The Archaeologist asked.

"Oh." The blonde woman again looked uncomfortable, "It's because Upper Yard isn't like the rest of Skypiea, it isn't made of the same materials"

At that Robin noted that Nami looked odd for a second, as if she was remembering something.

"it's the only part of Skypiea, the only considerable chunk of land that is made of something we call Vearth, hard materials like soil and rock which we believe ascended from the Blue Sea."

"EARTH!" Toph shot up from her stance,, "Nami, why didn't you say something?"

"I completely forgot, I was still focusing on Enel!" Nami guiltily looked down at the face of the young earth-bender, that spark that she now possessed in her blind eyes looked familiar, she racked her brain trying to place it.

'Adventure/Earth.' the joint excited voices of Luffy and Toph, as well as their faces, overlapped in her mind.

"NO!" Nami didn't want to to do this, but she had to nip this in the bud quickly. "Toph I'm sorry but we can't go to Upper Yard, I don't know if Enel is a god or not, but he has power to back the claim up." Nami explained, vividly remembering the massive pillar of lightning that had conjured up in an instant to fry that pirate, lightning that was supposedly dictated by Enel himself, she shivered.

"Oh, come on! he's on an island of earth, I know you guys haven't really seen me in action yet but with Earth beneath my feet I bet I can take him! If it comes down to it." Toph pleaded.

"I'm sorry Toph, but it just doesn't sound like a good idea." Nami replied, she understood that Toph had something to prove, but she wanted her to understand that Upper Yard was too risky, being an unknown quantity.

Toph's response was to sigh in defeat.

"Fine, you're the navigator, But you better get us back down to the sea, to some _real_ islands pronto." Nami noted the sense of resignation in her voice, while hard to stomach, she felt she had done the right thing to keep the crew safe.

Nami assured Toph that she would find a real island as soon as their descent was finished, before she continued her conversation with Conis, explaining how they were going to keep Luffy in the dark about heading to the current, to prevent him from turning the ship away from the route to salvation in favour of finding an adventure. Conis then left suddenly, saying that she was going to collect Luffy and the others.

* * *

Speaking of Luffy, he was pigging out on the leftover food up at Conis' house, alongside a typically more reserved Katara, Usopp was nearby scanning through some of Pagaya's tools, while Sanji and Zuko were in the kitchen preparing more food for the trip.

Parallel to the talk between Nami and Toph, Katara had been speaking to Usopp.

"I just want to look out for her," she continued, downtrodden.

"Yeah, but she doesn't seem to want you to look out for her," The long-nosed sniper replied. "She really hates people underestimating her, doesn't she? I guess that has a habit of making things problematic."

"It's unfortunate, but the fact is she really is more disadvantaged in this world. I really should have been more tactful about what I said though." Katara said, still looking downtrodden.

"Hey," Zuko interjected, walking into the room carrying a few boxes, "this isn't the first time you guys have fought and it won't be the last. But you always fix things in the end, just talk to her again when we disembark, it'll work out."

"Thanks Zuko, I'll do that," Katara felt a little more at ease, promising herself that she would apologize to Toph when she saw her.

At that Usopp moved over towards the balcony to admire the view, as Conis came into the room. She immediately complimented Sanji, who had also just entered the room with more food boxes, on the visual presentation of the food itself.

This started an argument between Luffy and Sanji.

"What's the point In dressing up food so much anyway?" the captain asked, annoyed that the food had been somewhat delayed by Sanji's insistence on presentation. "it still tastes the same, it still comes out the same, so who cares what it looks like?"

"Idiot, food should be a treat for your eyes as well as your taste-buds!" Sanji retorted.

"Well Toph seems to enjoy food just fine, doesn't seem like the presentation matters much." Katara interceded.

"Yeah! And besides, even I can't eat with my eyes, although I did eat with my nose once." Luffy proceeded.

"Please stop talking…" the bemused chef replied.

* * *

Back down at the ship another discussion had broken out,

"Wait, you think Conis was lying?" Nami asked in disbelief.

"Think about it, if there really was a current that instantly took people back down to the Blue Sea, wouldn't we hear about more people returning from Sky Islands?" Robin replied, being the one who had raised the issue in the first place.

"Well, that's probably just because not many people make it up here safely. So not many people can return if they never even made it here." Chopper suggested.

"I don't know, she sounded nervous, I can't say she's lying, but i think she might not be telling the whole tru-" Toph suddenly stopped speaking and jumped to her feet, turning her head towards the side of the ship.

"Is something wrong Toph?" Chopper asked, confused at the Earth-bender's sudden change in behaviour.

"I hear something moving in the water, whatever it is, it's massive. And it's getting closer." Toph said, leaning over the rail of the ship.

the rest of the crew could now hear the sound too, Zoro lowered a hand to his swords.

Toph then seemed puzzled as the sound suddenly stopped. Suddenly everything was silent. A moments that felt like an hour passed by, before suddenly, it happened.

A shockwave jolted the ship, knocking Chopper and Nami off their feet, and Knocking Toph over the portside. She managed to wrap a hand around the railing though and was quickly pulled back up by an immediately alert Zoro.

"What's going on!?" he shouted, the question directed at Robin, who was at the stern of the ship scanning around them.

"There's something under the ship!" she yelled in reply. "It's huge, this is probably what caused the sounds Toph was hearing!" the ship then started to make some visible signs of movement.

* * *

"Hey! What's going on?" Usopp, back up on the balcony, exclaimed. "The ship, It's being dragged away!"

Luffy, Sanji, Zuko and Katara immediately raced over to Usopp and confirmed he was correct, the ship was indeed moving, and moving fast, stern first away from the beach.

"No! The ship!" Usopp's main concern was obvious.

"Toph-chan, Robin chan, Nami-Swan!" As was Sanji's, 'Never mind that bastard Marimo!'

But Luffy was concerned that the crew had left them behind in search of adventure, before being quickly reminded by Zuko that for one, the ship wouldn't be sailing away backward, two, that it wouldn't be moving that fast, and three, that those on board would be the ones to steer clear of adventure/danger, he then realised that Toph and Zoro were on the ship, and omitted his third point. Those two weren't exactly known for being cowardly or reserved.

It turned out that the ship was being carried away by a massive crab, referred to by Pagaya as the 'Legendary Super Express Crab'

* * *

"I'm guessing this is 'heaven's judgement' then?" Robin speculated.

"It's likely; we're probably being taken to that forbidden island." Zoro agreed.

"Yes!" Toph cheered, promptly being glared at by Nami, which somehow she actually took note of, "I mean, oh… oh no!" Toph rectified, attempting to appease the navigator whilst still cheering under her breath, doing a little dance reminiscent of Chopper.

* * *

Back at Conis' house Pagaya was explaining how the ship and it's denizens had been taken as a sacrifice, and that this was a criminal trial meant for the members of the crew not on the ship, that the five still present needed to survive the ordeals of upper yard and the priests who oversaw the island in order to save their friends from being sacrificed by Enel. But they would need to borrow a waver boat in order to navigate through the cloud-canals that twisted through Upper Yard. Conis offered to take them to a port in the town beyond the beach. As they travelled through the town they noticed all of its residents were eyeing them as if they were torching each building the passed.

"Why is everyone avoiding us like this?" Zuko finally dropped the question.

"Word's probably spread that we're criminals." Sanji replied, "They probably don't want to risk being classified as 'friends or associates' of us."

After that Luffy began to window browse the shops around them, at one point he disappeared, before falling from the sky and landing back in front of the group moments later. Zuko, confused, gauged the reactions around him and was surprised to see that practically no-one except Conis had even reacted to their captain's antics, 'If I ever stay here long enough to become desensitized to this guy, then I know I've been here too long.' He calculated.

"Luffy, can you stop wasting time? The others might be in trouble!" Sanji growled, pulling Luffy onto his feet by the front of his shirt.

"Sorry, Luffy but he's right, Upper Yard sounds dangerous, and with Toph being completely blind up here they'll be short of one fighter." Katara added

"I wouldn't worry about that so much." Conis said. "From what I overheard, your friend Toph can see when she's on Vearth, correct?"

"Well we call it Earth, but yeah, what's your point?" Usopp asked, clearly puzzled.

"Upper Yard is the only place in the sky islands that is made completely of Vearth." Conis finished.

"Wow, well that definitely improves their chances!" Zuko added, clearly relieved.

"Yeah, Zoro's super strong, Toph's strong, Robin and Chopper are both strong, Nami, well Nami's smart!" Luffy ran through his crew members, counting them off on his fingers. His smile then quickly turned to a pout, "Those adventure-hogs! There's gonna be no-one left to fight by the time we get there!" The captain then picked up his pace, taking action in accordance with his own bizarre logic.

"As long as they have Zoro and Toph with earth beneath her feet, they should be fine." Katara noted, "I'm glad that she's at least in an environment where she can protect herself now. She's probably pretty happy about it too."

* * *

Meanwhile the Merry continued to be dragged along one of three interweaving cloud channels, An interesting point of discussion having been raised.

"Are we there yet?" Toph was sat on the Figurehead of the Merry, bouncing up and down

"No." came the near-unanimous reply of the others for what felt like the thousandth time.

"…How about now?"

"No…"

"…Now?"

"NO!" even Robin raised her voice at that one.

"Now?" Toph didn't stop, clearly enjoying the reaction from the others, 'Hey, it was a boring trip.'

"Ugh… kill me now." Zoro demanded.

"Woah… " Toph said as she stepped down from the figurehead, "I think Chopper's sickness medicine is starting to wear off."

"Are you gonna be okay?" Nami asked, switching gears to concerned instantly.

"Well that depends." Toph replied, Robin couldn't help but notice she seemed to be suppressing a grin.

"Depends on what?" Nami asked…

"Are we there yet?" Toph was no longer suppressing anything, wearing a grin that spread from ear to ear.

"Goddamnit Toph!"

* * *

Back at Angel Island, Conis had led the other half of the crew to a gondola hut on the edge of the solid sections of the town. Luffy expressed disappointment that they'd be riding a small gondola which was apparently based on a crow, rather than the massive gondola to its right which was deep red and shaped to resemble an eastern-style dragon.

"Right, if you take the gate marked as number two you should be fine." Conis explained while pointing outwards towards one of several gates that led on to their own respective narrow cloud currents, which as it turned out, were called Milky Roads.

Katara couldn't help but notice that Conis seemed nervous. 'It's probably just because she doesn't want Enel to class her as a criminal for helping us. It wouldn't hurt to let her know how much we appreciate this.'

"Conis." Katara began, drawing the blonde woman's gaze to her, "Thank you for everything, you're risking so much to help us and our friends, so sincerely, thank you." Katara said while dropping into a small respectful bow, which was a fairly common gesture back home, not so much here.

While Katara had been saying this, Usopp had started towards processing what was going on.

"Wait, yeah, everyone in town has been avoiding us like the plague, but you and Pagaya have been helping us, wouldn't that make you, like an accomplice or something? In Enel's eyes at least?" the sniper pondered, sounding concerned.

"Conis, you should have just told us where to go, we'd have been fine!" Luffy sounded genuinely upset that he was risking Conis and Pagaya's wellbeing.

"No…that's…that's not it." Conis exclaimed nervously, she sounded like she was on the verge of tears. She then dropped to her knees. "I've been leading you here for a reason; I showed you the path to take for a reason."

At that, Zuko overheard one of the citizens nearby exclaiming fear that Conis was about to say too much, much to his confusion, he also noticed that the entire civilian populace had moved well clear of their group, even further than before.

"I… I was the one who called the express crab…" Conis finally admitted.

"What!?" Sanji and Katara exclaimed, instantly outraged. "You called that thing to take Nami-swan, Toph-chan and Robin-chan away?" Sanji continued.

"Why would you do that!?" Katara yelled.

"It's the duty of all Skypiea citizens to ensure all criminals end up on upper yard, I'm so sorry..." Conis elaborated, openly crying now.

"Wait… so Enel and his Priests, they forced you to do this?" Luffy asked, looking down, his face hidden in shadow, Conis could only nod. "So why tell us at all!?" Luffy yelled furiously, "Now your life is in danger too!"

Conis was shocked. Luffy was eyeing his supposed traitor, not with anger towards her, but with concern for her life. His anger seemed to be solely directed at Enel now.

"That's right." Zuko confirmed "we were heading there anyway, then you could have just performed your duty as a citizen without jeopardizing your own life, our lives are hanging on this either way, but yours wasn't!"

"I just couldn't bear deceiving you all, you've been so-" Conis continued with tears still in her eyes.

She was interrupted from her speech however, by a bizarre change in the sky, white light started to emanate directly overhead. A light humming sound could also be heard.

"Wait. That's…" Zuko matched up Nami's description of Enel's supposed power, with his own knowledge of the phenomenon that seemed to be occurring "MOVE!" He suddenly shouted, pulling a bedazzled Usopp as far away from their current position as he could, Sanji and Katara followed suit. Katara easily moved clear, quickly preventing Sanji from trying to carry her away when it wasn't needed. Their reasons for moving were immediately apparent, as a massive pillar of lightning blasted downward from the light, a resounding crack sounded soon after.

The target was obvious, and was currently being carried away at top speed by Luffy, Conis had a look of absolute horror on her face, as the lightning seemed to Arc towards them, chasing them as if it had a mind of its own. In an instant both the rubber man and the Skypiean disappeared, consumed by the monstrous power of Enel's lightning.

All of this had happened seconds. The speed of light was not to be trifled with, this was made apparent when the steam and smoke that was produced by the impact started to clear, there was a massive crater hammered into the ground, about 30 metres across.

"Luffy?!" Usopp screamed out, desperately scanning the crater, his friend was nowhere in sight.

"Conis-chan?!" Sanji yelled, before proceeding to do the same thing as Usopp, "Luffy! Where are you two?"

Zuko and Katara could only watch in horrified silence.

"Luffy?" Katara spoke quietly, she turned her head towards Zuko, and also thought of Aang, both of which had almost been killed by Azula's lightning-bending. They had survived, but there was no comparison, 100 Azulas launching lightning at the same time _might_ be able to equal the sheer power that had just been unleashed on two of her friends.

"Don't worry blue-sea dwellers. They are safe!" A voice rung out from behind the group, a voice accompanied by the sound of beating wings.

Zuko turned to see a familiar sight, an Old man with a big white moustache clad in massive armour, riding an odd pink giant bird, with Luffy and Conis rag-dolled over the saddle.

"Gan Fall!" Zuko was surprised to see him. Luffy quickly jumped down from the bird.

"Thanks old man!" Luffy did a mock-salute.

"I thought you'd be busy protecting the people coming up to the Lower White Sea?" Usopp inquired.

"That's usually where I'd be," Gan Fall elaborated, sounding resigned. "But I heard on the grape-vine that there was a group of supposed Level 2 criminals passing through, and I wanted to make sure that none of the Citizens of Angel Island got hurt by Enel for helping them."

"Needless to say, thanks for the help." Katara offered.

"I'll take this lovely young lady to my home," The knight made sure that Conis was secure on the bird, which was apparently called Pierre, "it's out of Enel's range. She'll be safe there,"

"Ok, but you better take care of Conis-chan!" Sanji growled.

"What are you five going to do in the mean-time?" Gan Fall asked, ignoring Sanji's aggressive stance.

"We're going to Upper Yard, to rescue our friends." Luffy offered, barely missing a beat as he said so.

Katara glanced at Luffy, then at the still smoking crater behind them, she didn't want to ever come face to face with the man who had created that scar on the land, but going by Luffy's plan that could easily happen, she looked towards Zuko to see what he thought, and his expression mirrored hers, of course, a fractional amount of lightning compared to that had nearly killed him.

Her thoughts then subsided, as she realized, yes, Zuko and Katara had faced the terror of someone who could move death incarnate at the speed of light, Aang had too, but Toph, and their other friends, hadn't, the two benders had experience which the others didn't, experience that could help them massively against Enel, she found resolve then and there, she would not back down when her friend's lives were on the line, ever.

"We're right behind you Luffy, all the way." Katara stepped into line behind the captain as they filed onto the Crow. They then set off up the 2nd milky road, to Upper Yard. With Luffy stood at the front, half leaning off of the Waver's bird figurehead,

'We're on our way guys, Hang on tight."

**(A/N) Right. A few notes: **

**I'm adding honorifics from now on, but only for Sanji as honestly after reading back through what I've got so far, it just doesn't feel right for his character without them. **

**Do NOT expect me to keep this pace up for the entire time I am writing this fic; firstly because putting out 15000+ words a week routinely will burn the enjoyment out of this, quickly. And secondly I am currently unemployed and job-searching, this means that I have vast reserves of free time which I may not have for much longer. That being said, I am not gonna drop this fic unless something drastic happens I have major plans going forward up to marineford and beyond, and I'm gonna try to never go longer than a month without updating, (NO PROMISES)**

**I've reposted, and reformatted my top ten favourite animated series on my profile, if you're interested, check that out.**

**REVIEW! Please, I'd like to hear some opinions.**

**Right. That's all, hope you guys enjoyed the chapter, and have a good day.**


	5. Spheres, Fears and Revelations

**A/N ****not much to say, besides I'm making a couple of small changes to the inner mechanics of bending, in order to better balance things into the One Piece world, this also involves making reference to a couple of things that would have happened off-screen in the TV series itself.**

**Avatar:TLA is the property of Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino and One Piece belongs to Eiichiro Oda. And if bank accounts were power levels, then dem bitches would be Super Saiyans, and I'd be Yamcha in comparison, now, all DBZ-wealth allegories aside, on with the chapter.**

* * *

Zuko and Katara, both sitting on opposite seats on the Crow, had just taken a moment to stare at each other's faces, finding the other's face to be equally deadpan, an expression which said one thing, and one thing only.  
'How slow is this thing?'  
it wasn't an unfair observation, the Crow simply was _crawling_ along the narrow road they were travelling, maybe it wasn't really designed for five people.

Growing bored, Zuko pulled his swords from his back, then pulled a whetstone from his pocket and proceeded to sharpen both blades, Katara also opted to use her time productively and began bending some cloud from beneath them into liquid form and then into three separate water-skins, she then placed two of them in a satchel on her back, and the other one on its usual place around her hip, she didn't know where on this island they would disembark, and whether there were any other water sources besides this cloud pathway, so it was a case of 'better safe than sorry.'

It was as they rounded a large blind corner on the Milky road, that it came into view.

"Guys?" Usopp asked, bemused, "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?!"

Katara, Luffy and Zuko could only nod, with widened eyes.

"That's Upper Yard?" a bewildered Sanji exclaimed, "Those trees… they're massive!"

Katara could only agree, the trees here were all around 70 metres tall at least! She could also now see as they got closer that the trees were indeed planted in soil, maybe the combination of the Sky Island environment, AKA all the water constantly around them in cloud form, plus soil just produced more growth in plants?

"Wait, this must be the entrance" said Luffy, staring ahead, the Milky Road continued onward some distance into the tree-line, it probably ran all the way to the centre of Upper Yard at least, but just ahead of the Crow were two large torches on either side of the road, with spears crossed through the centre of both, and what appeared to be the skull of an Ox or something fastened just above on both, this was the point of no-return.

The group passed by these signs, no-one speaking a word, with the exception of Usopp who suggested turning back only to be immediately shot down by Zuko, during a long period of silence, in which the waver passed some odd stone idols which seemed to scare Usopp, then heard some loud bird calls from the jungle, which seemed to scare Usopp, then saw what appeared to be the wreckage of some ships which had been sliced in half, which seemed to scare the living daylights out of Usopp and put the rest of the crew on edge.

They Immediately found out what had destroyed the ships however, as a massive bladed pendulum swung down from the trees on their right, missing by inches and slicing one of the wrecks into even smaller pieces, the crew stared in horror for a few moments before…

"There's more coming!" Usopp screamed as he hunkered down on the deck of the waver,

"Paddle like crazy!" Luffy's orders in response sounded fairly sound, as Usopp and Sanji followed them, Luffy being unable to do so as they had no actual paddles and he couldn't make contact with the water without losing his strength, Zuko and Katara both used their bending to make things easier.

Standing at the stern and angling his arms downward, then firmly planting his feet, Zuko let loose a massive continuous stream of fire aimed at the cloud just behind them, his flames acted just like a breath dial and gave the Waver a sizeable boost in speed, Katara meanwhile used her bending to make the cloud sparser and easier to travel through, this also tremendously increased their speed as they dodged the pendulums.

Eventually it appeared that they had cleared the pendulum trap, Zuko promptly collapsed from exhaustion, sustaining that fire had seriously done a number on him, Usopp gave him an appreciative pat on the shoulder, Luffy and Sanji offered thanks, knowing how hard it was for him to fire-bend up at this altitude, although Sanji sounded a bit bitter while doing so.

It was now up to the others to protect them from what came next, as volleys of sharpened wooden stakes were suddenly being fired at the group, many of the stakes were being batted away by whips, both of the water, and rubber variety. The ones that made it past were being knocked away by Sanji, who in an act of begrudging consideration was covering the otherwise incapacitated Zuko, and the mostly defenceless Usopp, who couldn't really hit the fast moving stakes with a slingshot.

After a few minutes of that it appeared that they had finally navigated their way to safety, those thoughts were soon dashed as a bladed metal wheel came flying at them out of nowhere only missing them as Usopp steered the boat away, bizarrely the object appeared to turn around and fly at them again.

Remembering her brother's weapon of choice Katara figured that this pass was just the return-to-sender, 'it always comes back.' as the waver dodged again she breathed a sigh of relief, with the blade disappearing back into the forest.

"Right, that should be that." She said, confidently, promptly eating her words as the blade swept back towards them again.

"I said… That should be that!" Katara yelled, eyebrow twitching as she pulled up a wall of water to block the blade, and then froze it solid upon impact.

"Katara-chan is so cute when she's angry!" Sanji suddenly let out. Receiving a stare of utter bewilderment from Zuko, the fire-bender in question then tried to stand only to collapse once more.

'What? Why do I still feel so weak?' the fire-bender pondered, breathing hard.

Katara had moved over towards him as he collected his thoughts and was proceeding to bend water towards his chest, she began to heal him, when he questioned exactly what she was healing, she elaborated.

"It's something I learned from Yugoda." Katara had fond memories in hindsight of the useful training she undertook before Pakku taught her his combat forms. "You can only bend so much before you move beyond your own capacity and start to do damage to your body, chi flows through your body along energy pathways, to allow you to bend, but when you put the energy pathways under too much pressure, they rupture. I've only ever had to heal this kind of thing once." Upon mentioning it, she reminisced upon that previous instance, her thoughts straying back to a desert and a library.

* * *

"_I'm going after Appa!" the young avatar declared, immediately grabbing his glider and soaring away, His friends immediately becoming dots to his eyes, amongst a vast canvas of golden sand._

"_Come on guys, we'd better get moving." Katara begrudgingly acknowledged. "We're the only ones who know about the eclipse, we need to make sure that information gets to Ba Sing Se."_

"_You reckon if we dig up the owl, he'll give us a ride?" Sokka inquired in one of his typical attempts to lighten the mood. As he, stepped into line behind his sister._

_The effect immediately wore off however as the two heard a loud thump from behind them and turned to see Toph was down, face-first in the sand._

"_Toph!" Sokka yelled as the two siblings ran back over to their friend._

"_Are you okay?" Katara asked, as she gently flipped Toph's prone, but still conscious form over._

"_I don't know… I feel… kind of weak..." Toph groaned._

_While Sokka looked confused, the gears in Katara's mind were turning._

"_I think I know what's wrong" the healer stated at last."Toph, how exactly did you keep that entrance open?" Katara was genuinely curious as by all accounts there seemed to be no way to do it._

"_I bent… The entire library at once… pretty sweet, huh?" Toph's grin was an odd counterpoint to her gasping voice._

_That caused both Sokka and Katara's eyes to widen; the library was made up of multiple floors, all of them individually massive, to even slow that down was an incredible feat, even matching the Avatars._

"_Toph that's incredible!" Sokka exclaimed._

"_But dangerous…" Katara added. As she began to heal the young earth-bender_

_Upon realizing the confused expressions worn both by Toph and Sokka, Katara elaborated about chi-pathways, and how if Toph had held on for too much longer she would have done irreparable damage to her body that would have caused her to lose her ability to bend._

"_Hmm… I'm guessing Aang's bending abilities aren't naturally just more powerful than anyone else's. He just has the ability to use that power without doing damage to his body, probably because of the Avatar spirit." Sokka theorized, Katara also felt that made sense._

'_Toph nearly sacrificed her bending, albeit unwittingly, to save our lives, and to think I once called her selfish.' Katara thought with a pang of guilt as she continued to heal her friend._

_"Toph."_

_"Yes, Sugar-Queen?"_

_"Thank you, for saving our lives."_

_"No Problem, we've all got to help each other, right?" __Toph smiled._

_"Yeah." Katara nodded._

_Once Toph felt a bit stronger, the trio decided to move onward, beginning their perilous trek across the desert…_

* * *

Katara was broken from her recollections by Usopp yelling once more, she turned to see why, immediately joining him in screaming, shortly thereafter Zuko joined in. in a moment that they would later refer to as "The orchestra of 'screw that!"

The reason for this reaction? a Lamprey about 20 metres long had leapt from the clouds in front of them, aiming to fit the Crow inside it's jawless mouth.

"I'll protect you Katara-chan!" Sanji sang as he jumped up and delivered a swift kick to the nightmarish creature's midsection, the creature was sent flying, and started sinking off to one side of the ship, the crew just watching the disgusting creature in fascinated horror.

"Hard to recommend Skypiea as a tourist destination…" Katara chose to break the atmosphere.

"Gla-maaffghsor" came the coherent reply from Usopp, who was face down on the deck and clearly zoned out.

"Interesting Flora, but the Fauna seem to come from somewhere between the worst nightmares of collective humanity, and actual hell." Zuko added in a deadpan tone.

The Crow continued its journey in silence.

* * *

About two kilometres away, the Going Merry had arrived at its destination, perched upon a massive stone structure, surrounded by a cloud-lake.

"Where the hell are we?" Zoro was the first to ask.

"It looks to be some sort of sacrificial altar." Robin implied.

At that Nami and Chopper's faces turned dark, Chopper fell off the side of the ship in shock before starting to roll down the steps that prefaced the building, and towards the water.

"Chopper!" Zoro immediately moved, to prevent the reindeer from falling in. but he was beaten to the punch.

Toph had disembarked while the others had been talking, sensing the earth that sat beneath the Merry, she was now moving down towards Chopper at high speeds, converting each stone step to a stone slide as she came to it. then, when she felt she was close enough, she raised the steps beneath Chopper into a barrier, stopping his descent.

"Nice one Toph!" Nami shouted, genuinely impressed.

The two youngest Straw-Hat members stood at the bottom of the steps and both were about to re-ascend them, when Toph heard three sounds in sequence, first, a sound of splashing water, second, Nami yelling to warn them of something, Third, a massive roar emanating from the sky just above the edge of the steps.

Nami yelled as loud as she could, terrified at seeing the massive creature before them, if she were to describe it, it'd be like a shark, but more elongated, and then increased by 50 times in size, she also knew, that with its body emerging from the cloud-lake, Toph wouldn't see it coming, Nami had clearly forgotten one other factor, which came into play when the beast roared.

Reacting quickly, Toph took a low stance and launched both arms forward, directed at the source of the sound. Mirroring her actions, the rock behind her responded, as a massive chunk of the stairs launched at the creature, nailing it In the head. While the creature staggered she grabbed Chopper, then bent the steps beneath them into one large platform, she then dropped Chopper on this new footing before in an action that resembled operating a rope pulley system, she forced the platform to slide quickly back up the steps.

"What was that, Nami? I couldn't hear you over all the ass I was just kicking" Toph said with a smug smile plastered on her face as she reached the top. The girl's glaring weaknesses and insecurities had melted away as soon as she had first placed her feet upon the altar.

Nami was just staring at the girl and the slowly recovering reindeer beside her, with her mouth agape.

"Well done, Toph. That was rather impressive." Robin congratulated.

Chopper's response was notably more enthusiastic as he launched himself at Toph and wrapped her in a hug, thanking her profusely with tears in his eyes.

"Well, swimming across is definitely out of the question." Zoro pointed out, as more of the creatures appeared, and started circling the Altar.

"There are more of those things?!" Nami exclaimed. "in fact, what even are those things?"

"Shark?" Chopper asked

"From the sky." Toph added.

"Sky-Shark." Robin concluded.

Zoro meanwhile was examining the Going Merry, disappointed to find that when the crab had taken them it had punched holes in the side of the hull.

"We're not leaving on the Merry either…" Zoro eliminated another potential option of departure. "So 'heaven's judgement' is to leave us stranded on an altar to starve to death? I'd expect something flashier from 'God'…"

"Does sound like a waste of time for a guy who can make lightning strike anywhere…" Toph agreed.

"Exactly," Zoro said. while climbing back on the Going Merry, "Chopper, do you reckon you can do some repair work on the ship?"

"Me?" The reindeer replied timidly.

"Yeah, why him? Are you going somewhere?" Nami asked, sceptically.

"Supposedly God's on this island… And by the time I'm done with him, he's gonna bow before me." Zoro finished with a smirk.

That response put stars in Chopper's eyes. Toph could only smirk.

"I'm coming too!" the earth-bender shouted.

"Sure, no problem, as soon as we find a way to cross we're going." The Swordsman replied.

"Wait a minute!" Nami interrupted, "why are you two actively searching for danger?"

"Danger's gonna find us either way, Nami" Zoro replied.

"Exactly, we're supposedly high level criminals," Toph assented "We're gonna end up fighting either way, so we may as well do it on our own terms."

"Well said, you mind if I tag along as well?" Robin asked, as she examined the ruined altar. "There may be more archaeological finds like this, and frankly I find them fascinating, this Altar itself appears to be around 1000 years old."

"1000?" Nami asked, disbelievingly.

"Yes, and just think of all the treasure this island might hold." Robin added slyly.

Nami's eyes seemed to go blank for a second, before coming back with her pupils shaped like Beri symbols, and that decided it, Zoro, Toph, Robin and Nami would scout out the forest, while Chopper waited for the rest of the Straw-Hats.

Zoro immediately found them a means of departure, a vine hanging from a tree way above the mast, which they would use to swing across, Robin used her devil fruit to drop the vine down.

"Okay, you ready?" Zoro asked the Earth-bender wrapped around his back.

"Ready as I'll ever be." The girl replied nervously, "flying through the air is not my forte."

And so Zoro swung, letting out a vibrato yell which he would come to call 'the call of bravery'. Toph's yelling was resoundingly less awe-inspiring. immediately after they landed, Toph proceeded to throw up. but then once she got over it she started using her seismic sense to get a lay of the land.

Robin came next, followed by Nami, As Chopper grabbed some of Usopp's tools to start attempting to repair the Merry.

"Good luck Chopper!" Toph yelled from the shore, before following the others, who had moved slightly ahead. With her senses now back on, and no longer restricted to a tiny dot of stone in the middle of a lake, Toph has her confidence back in her stride.

"Hey Toph, most of the ground is actually tree-roots is that-" Nami started.

"Don't worry; I can see through them just fine, i can see through anything solid with only two exceptions. i just can't see on boats because the waves make the vibrations crazy." Toph interrupted, still glancing back at the Merry, for whatever reason she had an odd feeling.

"Do you think Chopper can manage by himself?" Toph asked.

"I trust him to keep the Merry safe." Zoro replied.

"I was more worried about him personally." Toph explained.

"Don't underestimate him, he's resourceful, and he's much braver than even he realises." Robin added.

"I guess you're right." Toph conceded, realizing that she didn't want to underestimate any of her friends. she had done this to Sokka when they first met, and he continued to save Team Avatar again and again, due to his quick-thinking resourcefulness.

* * *

Back on the main Milky Road, Luffy's group had come across something odd. A massive stone head, similar to the idols they saw earlier was blocking the road. In front of it were four smaller heads, each was hollowed out, seemingly being entrances to tunnels. each head had a caption on it, and from left to right they read as Ordeal of Swamp, Ordeal of Iron, Ordeal of String and Ordeal of Balls, the intent was clear on this one, they would have to pick their poison so to speak, choosing the ordeal they would take on.

The crew started to debate which would be the best to take.

"Ordeal of Swamp? Swamp-water might be involved, so you could bend it, Katara." Zuko suggested.

"Possibly, if we had Toph with us I'd suggest the Ordeal of Iron, but that's probably off the cards" Katara responded.

"They all sound threatening to me!" Usopp cried.

"Dried paint sounds threatening to you…" Zuko deadpanned.

"Or balls." Luffy suggested, ignoring the interlude in suggestions "I like Balls."

"You could misinterpret a lot from that sentence" Zuko said in a deadpan tone,

"Huh?" Luffy merely stared at Zuko curiously, clearly missing his intention

"N-nothing, nothing at all." Zuko replied, not even having any comprehension of how he would explain a joke about sexual preferences to someone as oblivious as Luffy.

"We should make the choice quickly; the gates are right on top of us." Sanji pointed out.

And so, seemingly on the captain's whim they chose the Ordeal of Balls. In the darkness of the tunnel Luffy let his mind wonder.

"Hey, what if this is one of those games?" The captain suddenly asked, looking contemplative, or as contemplative as Luffy can possibly look.

"Games?" Katara questioned.

"Yeah, you know, like there's one correct choice and the wrong ones…"

"What? What would the wrong ones lead to?" Usopp interrogated the rubber man. Suddenly sounding scared.

At this Luffy contemplated again, a moment later he spoke again.

"if you choose the wrong one, you fall off the island." He finished, laughing.

"Why would you say something so preposterous!" Usopp shouted, punching Luffy on the top of the head, "we're ten thousand metres in the air! I don't how many times your life could flash before your eyes during that kind of fall and I don't want to know."

"You're both being childish." Zuko added. "That would never happen."

It was at that point that the Crow finally emerged at the light at the end of the tunnel; the five were momentarily blinded as their eyes adjusted to the change in light. When all of them had adjusted, they looked around, there were no trees in sight on either side, and the Milky Road had disappeared from beneath them.

Time seemed to slow down for just one silent second as they all processed this.

'Ten thousand metres above sea level' Usopp's last statement entered all their minds, slowly they all cranked their heads to look at each other, then upon seeing the expression on each other's faces. They let their feelings on the situation become known.

"AAAAARRGH!" 'The Orchestra of Screw that' had an encore.

"WHY DOES THE UNIVERSE HATE ME?!" Zuko managed to somehow be heard over the others.

The Crow just continued to fall, every person on it screaming all the way with eyes popping out of their heads in terror.

Then to their surprised relief, they landed with a resounding crash back on the Milky Road.

"Because… you…make it…too…easy." Katara panted, responding to Zuko's question.

While Usopp and Sanji proceeded to beat up Luffy for putting the idea in their heads, Katara looked back to see where they had just come from, it was a massive waterfall 'cloudfall?' about on hundred metres in height, she had to admit, that would have been just a bad trip if it hadn't been for Luffy putting the thought into their heads which made it exactly one hundred times worse.

* * *

Deep in the forest, Zoro lead the group forward through the forests, Toph saying that she couldn't sense anything particularly interesting to use as a waypoint. In the end the four came to another cloud river.

"Enough of this, where is this 'God'?" Zoro complained,

"Yeah, never had 'God' pegged as a coward…" Toph added, while glad to have her bending back she quickly grew bored from having nothing to use it on.

"Why are you guys so sceptical about the whole God thing?" Nami asked, genuinely curious.

"Seeing is believing." Zoro replied, genuinely believing that if something couldn't be experienced it didn't exist. He then realized an oversight, "No offense Toph, turn of phrase."

"None taken, i prefer 'experiencing is believing' anyway." Toph replied as Zoro murmured in agreement then when she realized Nami was now looking for her explanation she relented "I believe in the spirits back home because I'm kind of friends with one of them, we don't even have tales of God back home, it's just the spirits, spirits and more spirits, only verification of God I've heard so far is the people on Angel Island, even then, they just seem to be describing an asshole who has a little bit of power."

"That power is real though!" Nami argued.

"No-one says it isn't, but Luffy has a body made of rubber, his brother can turn his body into flame. There are loads of people with power, they can't all be God." Zoro concluded.

"Urgh, whatever." Nami conceded, she wasn't particularly religious either, she just wanted to make Zoro realize that Enel might be too dangerous for them to handle.

"Regardless, we need to cross this river." Zoro attempted to get the group back on track.

"And how are we gonna do that?" Nami asked as she stepped forward towards the riverbank.

"Wait Nami, watch your step!" Toph warned noting the bank was crumbling, but it was too late. Nami stepped on the edge of the river bank which gave way, Nami toppled towards the river, where in a display of incredible predatory instinct, a small Sky-shark appeared, aiming to grab the Navigator in its jaws, reacting quickly, Zoro punched the creature while throwing Nami backward.

"If you think I'm crossing the river after that you've got another thing coming!" the navigator shouted, terrified.

After calming Nami down, the group got over their brief ordeal and decided to move onward, heading upstream and hoping to find a safer place to cross.

* * *

After a long and boring journey the group on the Waver finally had something to note. More torches, these ones with signs attached, and after that, the milky road seemed to gain a new addition, odd white spheres were floating above and around the track, also spreading out into the forest, they seemed to stretch on and on for hundreds of metres. While Sanji was advising caution as well as telling the crew to keep a look-out, Luffy and Usopp were playing with one of the spheres, which Luffy had reeled in, throwing the object to and fro, Katara watched in amusement at their child-like behaviour. Zuko could only sit and wonder, 'what kind of leader is he?'

It was then that the ball the two were playing with randomly decided to pop and reveal a Sky-Shark.

"GAH!" Usopp yelled, swiftly dodging the incoming Sky-shark-ball-of-doom.

Sanji shouted in surprise,

Luffy opted to be the proactive element of the group, punching the ball and the shark that was still half encased in it, away.

Zuko could only stare, Eyes quivering.

"There was a shark inside the ball…" was all Katara could muster, speaking in monotone. She then scanned her eyes around the forest, noting all the spheres that surrounded them, before finishing with a fairly appropriate response. "Nope…"

"There's another one!" Usopp yelled, pointing in front of the waver.

Sanji moved to kick the ball away, but the second his foot made contact, the ball exploded in a fiery blaze.

Amazingly no-one was seriously hurt in the explosion, but it was then that the group heard an odd laugh echoing from off to their right, followed by speech from the same source.

"Silly children! These are surprise clouds, you never know what's going to come out of them!" their target was sat upon one of the odd spheres, the voice belonging to perhaps the oddest looking person the benders had yet seen. His body was almost perfectly spherical, his arms and legs jutted out of said body, looking completely disproportional, he also had long red hair, with a perfectly triangular flat nose. His clothes completely complimented the oddity, as he wore a full white jumpsuit with a sequence of golden rings running from the centre of his neck down to the centre of his pelvis, a yellow flat hat, yellow tinted sunglasses, and orange gloves and boots, because he obviously felt he didn't look odd enough, he was carrying a staff designed to look like a candy cane.

The Straw-Hats could only sit and stare at him for a few moments.

"Wha…" was all Luffy could manage.

"It's a human dumpling…" Sanji elaborated, looking just as confused as the others.

"Eh, Yurgh…" was the best Usopp could come up with to summarize their situation.

Meanwhile, Katara was processing what was going on. 'Cloud balls filled with traps hmm?' she decided to wait for a good opportunity to put her plan into action.

After a brief conversation in which the man, who was apparently named Satori explained he was one of the Skypiean priests. And that they would need to beat his ordeal of balls to proceed.

"Please, can we just refer to it as the ordeal of spheres from now on?" Zuko asked quickly.

He never got a response as Satori decided to charge, somehow dodging the response from Luffy with apparent ease, almost like he had seen it coming. He then brought his hand point-blank to Luffy's face.

What happened next, nobody at the time knew. After a quick flash of light and an odd sound, both of which seemed to emanate from Satori's hand, Luffy suddenly went flying straight off the Waver before crashing into a tree, his eyes went white and blood dripped from his mouth as he hit.

"Luffy!" Usopp and Katara both yelled, Katara holding both hands to her mouth as she watched the captain fall, and fall hard.

Zuko was the first to respond, immediately pulling both of his swords free, he slashed at Satori's head from both sides, but once again Satori predicted it, ducking down before aiming his hand upwards towards Zuko's chest, again came the odd sound, and again one of the Straw-Hats was sent flying, Zuko hit the underbrush of the forest, and stayed down.

Katara immediately responded, bending the water from below into several shards of ice then attacking Satori from all sides. Satori appeared confused for a second but could do nothing as the attack hit home. The attack wasn't strong enough to do much however, as with the range she had put them at before flying them in, the shards hadn't gained enough speed to penetrate very deep.

Satori who now had several shards of ice stuck skin-deep in him, was seemingly enraged, his focus was entirely on Katara as he aimed to hit her with his odd, but powerful attack, he was inches away when the side of a boot connected with his face. Launching him off the waver.

Satori recovered quickly landing on one of his cloud spheres.

'Foolish of me, I lost focus.' the bizarre priest recalled, he was still inexperienced with Mantra, and couldn't focus too well on multiple targets at once.

He then aimed for a different tactic, and began launching dozens of the spheres at Katara, Usopp and Sanji who were still on the Waver.

Katara grinned, before beginning to move her arms, with each flowing motion she made, one of the spheres evaporated into normal steam, their respective contents were unable to do damage from this range as they fell harmlessly to the floor.

* * *

Back on the forest floor, Luffy and Zuko were slowly recovering; they looked up to see Satori's fearsome attacking strategy being ploughed through, simply because of the bad (good for the straw-hats) luck of who his opponent was, Katara's defence never faltered once, she then immediately began a counter-attack, popping the sphere beneath him, only for him to move to another, every time he moved though he was under attack from Sanji's kicks or Usopp's slingshot. The three has split up with Katara still on the waver and had seemingly organized a fair strategy.

There was a problem though, Satori had enough skill to manoeuvre even while airborne, Sanji and Usopp's attacks just never landed simply from not being quite fast enough.

"Luffy, he thinks we're down for the count, I say we catch him by surprise, but we need something fast enough to hit him." The fire-bender offered.

Luffy nodded, then thought for a second before whispering a plan in Zuko's ear.

"NO!" Zuko responded immediately. "That's asinine! Neither of us would ever survive that!"

"You got a better idea?" Luffy replied, pouting, he was quite proud of his plan actually.

Zuko scanned the battlefield, Katara had now popped the majority of the spheres, somewhere in the hundreds, and she was starting to look fatigued. Sanji and Usopp still couldn't hit Satori, in spite of the fact that he no longer seemed to be able to predict them with his unknown ability, seemingly having it focused entirely on Katara and which sphere she'd destroy next, the process of getting an angle on an airborne target made the pair too predictable, even normal people could see these attacks coming. Katara's stamina didn't look like outlasting the Spheres she was destroying now too.

"Fine. Let's do it." Zuko finally agreed. "This is going to really weaken me again though, but it's worth the risk."

"YES!" Luffy cheered. "This is going to be so cool!"

* * *

'I can barely feel my arms.' Katara thought as she continued to create opportunities for Usopp and Sanji to attack, she couldn't even count how many spheres she had destroyed now, occasionally she'd try to convert one to ice or pure water rather than evaporating them, just to try and catch Satori out, but he always predicted it. She just hoped that she could continue to buy the others time to land a proper hit on him. She needed to go check on Luffy and Zuko as soon as possible. just as she wondered if the pair were alright, she saw a blur move past her, straight towards Satori, for just one instant, it was completely clear what she was looking at.

"WHAT?!"

* * *

Sanji continued to charge up a tree, before kicking off of it, launching himself upwards at Satori who was again caught in mid-air. He twisted in mid-air, launching into an overhead kick, missing Satori by inches, before he started a natural descent. Suddenly he caught something coming out of the corner of his eye, whatever it was, it was moving at an incredible pace. As it came closer, he figured it out.

"THE HELL?!"

* * *

Usopp could only stare; he expected something like this from his insane captain, but not from Zuko.

The cause of his confusion? Luffy, who was in an inflated form, was flying head first, moving past at an outrageous speed, but he wasn't alone, Zuko was with him, the two were tied back to back using one of Luffy's arms. Zuko was pulling the same trick he had on the Waver, using fire like a massive thruster to launch himself and his inflated companion straight at Satori, it was several times more effective this time though, both due to the lighter weight being moved, and Luffy's Buoyancy.

Luffy eyes had glazed over into sparkles again.

"I'm Flyiiiiiiing!" he cheered. "Gomu-Gomu no Nekkikyu! **(Gum-Gum Hot-Air Balloon!)**"

Satori turned, to the source of the sound.

"Oh…" was all he could manage before Luffy's body slammed into him full force. Now, being hit by an inflated rubber ball can hurt. Being hit by an inflated rubber ball moving at 70 miles an hour, _will _hurt. So what could be said about being hit by an inflated rubber ball that is moving at 70 miles an hour that also possesses the size and weight of a human being?

Needless to say, Satori was knocked senseless, and with a slight bounce Luffy hit the ground, before deflating and extracting Zuko from his back.

"Well…it worked…" Zuko managed to squeeze out before he collapsed again.

Luffy just stood there. Still beaming, his eyes ablaze with golden light.

"THAT WAS AWESOME!"

Sanji, Usopp and Katara just stood and stared…

"I should probably make sure Zuko isn't dead…" Katara decided before asking the other four to return to the Waver.

* * *

All the way on the other side of Skypiea, Nami, Robin and Zoro were walking along, Zoro claiming that he heard the sounds of battle, Rpbin suggested that it was Luffy waging a fight to find them, which Zoro agreed with.

"Wait a second, where did Toph go?" Nami asked, prompting the three to look around.

"Toph!?" Zoro called out.

"Over here guys!" the familiar voice replied, from ahead of them. "You've got to come check this out!"

Zoro smiled, Toph was making things a lot easier on the group, earlier she had managed to sense someone, apparently a very small someone, running out from the base of a tree ahead of them, while this person hadn't amounted to a threat, as they had quickly disappeared, climbing up a tree and beyond Toph's 'sight', it was useful to have an effective scout. She had also discovered a set of overgrown ruins, which prompted Robin to wonder what civilization had built them when they were so obviously going to become overrun by the giant trees.

Moving past some trees, the group found Toph, standing near the edge of Upper Yard's north shore, what she had found stunned them. An odd stone structure which ended perfectly in line with the shore, a structure which looked half-complete.

"That's the other half of Cricket's house!" Nami exclaimed. Remembering the stone building that Noland occupied, that appeared to have been split clean in two before he had plastered that fake-palace front on to it.

"It's as I thought. Upper Yard, was once part of Jaya." Robin finally concluded.

"The city of gold, it didn't sink into the ocean." Nami added, "it's been in the sky, for 400 years!"

* * *

**A/N ****longest chapter yet, Woot.**

**A Few notes. **

**the first being to acknowledge that the finale of TLOK Spirits was freaking amazing, after I first watched it I was just perplexed, but upon a re-watch, remembering stuff like how Vaatu grew within Raava and the reverse could happen too, and Iroh's speech about how positivity can bring forth Light. I realized that everything fell into place perfectly. **

**I'm still disappointed at some things though, Unalaq was a BORING, BORING villain, easily the worst in the franchise. But then there are wonderful things like the death of that damn "Makorra" pairing, seriously I ranted against "Zutara" before, but compared to Makorra, Zutara is like a godsend, because at least with Zutara, the characters ssemed to actually LIKE EACH OTHER… Makorra was like the most dysfunctional relationship ever, only appreciated by the fan-girls who also gush over Twilight. (what is it with some tween girls and borderline BROKEN relationships?)**

**On another note I hope no-one minds my additions to the canon, well they're not really additions, just gaps that have been filled. But still. I felt it was necessary to adapt the way that bending works to balance it out with the One Piece world and give it kind of a measurability. It's now a little bit more like the use of Chakra or Ki from Naruto/Dragonball respectively, if you use too much over your personal limits, too fast, you run big risks, I felt it would also make a good way of potentially explaining how Chi-blocking works.**

**Now, honestly, I can perceive some people finding this to be a problem, so mention it if you do. If I appear to be favouring one character over another too much, then tell me. I know I have a tendency to favour Toph, as honestly, she's not just my favourite Avatar character, but one of my favourite characters in all of fiction.**

**Speaking of which I may post a top-ten favourite characters list on my profile or something, who knows.**

**Hope you enjoyed the chapter. See you guys next time.**


	6. Strategies and Reunions

**A/N ****just a quick notice, I will not be covering major canon events that aren't directly affected by the crossover; hence me not covering the Chopper/Gan Fall/Shura fight.**

**When the non-canon characters are present for canon events it will be covered, but otherwise, don't expect me to be recreating the anime note for note. I've covered about 17 episodes with 32,000 words, which I think is pretty good. I'm betting it'll be another 500,000 odd words before I even get to Marineford. (For point of reference, that is longer than the first FOUR Harry Potter books put together.)**

**Regardless, thought I should address that. Oh and I also made a front cover image for this story. It could be better, but I'm reasonably proud of it.**

**One Piece is the property of Eiichiro Oda. Avatar: The Last Airbender is the property of Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino, and thanks to Naruto Abridged, I always end up accidentally writing "(thing) is the property of Masashi Kishimoto" before correcting it, and I DON'T EVEN WATCH NARUTO ABRIDGED ANYMORE!**

**Right, on with the chapter.**

* * *

The sounds of battle emanated throughout the forests of Upper Yard, while perceived by some to be the sounds of clashes between the Blue Sea dwellers that had laid siege to the island fighting off Enel's Priests, in actuality a third party had entered the action.

Moving swiftly through the trees, a formation of people, who seemed to be tribal in nature, were readying themselves for a coming fight. Among their collective thoughts, one thing could be gathered.

'Wiper will lead us to victory.'

At the head of the formation lay the man in question, heavily armed with tanned skin and his bare chest adorned with red tribal markings along with his face; this was Wiper, leader of the Shandian warriors.

"Break off here, engage the priests! They may be powerful, but they are down by one in number, use that to your advantage! Overwhelm them!" Wiper recited his orders with practiced focus, "Kamakiri take your squad right. Laki, support Kamakiri. Genbo! Take you squad and search for the girl!"

This attack was the culmination of several different factors aligning at once, if they didn't succeed here, what other chance would they have?

* * *

"_Aisa, what happened?" Laki asked with concern as the young girl ran into the village yelling her name._

"_Important…news…. need to…tell Wiper." The girl panted as she came to a stop. _

"_What do you need to tell me?" the man in question asked as he walked out of his home._

_Aisa froze, she hadn't thought things through, Wiper probably needed to hear this, but did she need to be the person to tell him? He scared the crap out of her! She then swallowed her fear, and resolved to tell him._

"_Gan Fall is attacking Upper Yard! He's fighting one of the priests!" she yelled quickly so as not to let her voice fade._

"_Truly?" Wiper let a sinister grin fall onto his face, "Then this is our chance to-"_

"_That's not all." Aisa recoiled in fear as she realized she had just interrupted Wiper._

"_Continue…" Wiper sounded angry, but he chose to let the girl speak._

"_When I was up there, I saw a group of those blue sea dwellers. There was this guy with swords, two women, and a girl about my age." Aisa paused, seemingly taking a moment to collect her thoughts. "That girl, she did something incredible, I couldn't believe my eyes."_

"_What?" Wiper demanded, growing impatient._

"_They were trying to figure out a way across a river, and she got them across a narrower point by…" Aisa paused again. She couldn't seem to be able find the right words. She decided to just go for it. "She could control Vearth!"_

_This raised eyebrows across the board, but mostly in confusion, not surprise._

"_Control…Vearth?" Laki pondered. "Want to elaborate?"_

"_She just went over to where the riverbank was higher, and she just moved her arm out." at this point Aisa threw a punch at air to demonstrate the motion. "And the ground below her just MOVED… she did that a couple of times and built a bridge!" _

_Everyone was speechless. Aisa nervously looked around, people had gathered to listen in. none of them said a word._

"_The Ex-God challenges God on the same day that someone who can manipulate sacred Vearth arrives on Upper Yard." Wiper said suddenly, a steely glint in his eye. "This is a sign from Calgara! This is the time. We will strike against Enel where he lives upon ill-gotten ground! And we will defeat him!" Wiper's speech was met with wild cheers._

"_These Blue-Sea Dwellers, including the manipulator of Vearth, we don't know their motivation." Another warrior by the name of Karakiri noted._

"_it doesn't matter. As long as they aren't in our way, we'll leave them be for the time-being, if they get in the way, they die, if the Vearth-girl sides with them-"_

"_You would kill her? She can manipulate Vearth! That must mean something!" Laki interrupted._

"_Her arrival here is prophetic." Wiper began. "But she herself is nothing exceptional, two of the others can command the worldly elements too, one was able to hold me in combat using water, the other seems to be able to summon fire, but his power was pitiful. We will give her the option to stand aside, or she will die with the rest."_

_It was at that moment that Aisa screamed, clutching her head._

"_Aisa?" Laki moved to comfort the girl._

"_Two voices, they disappeared!" the girl sounded terrified, her development of Mantra was both a blessing and a curse to her, as she was able to keep the tribe updated on events on Upper Yard. But doing so also meant that she had 'witnessed' far more deaths then a child her age should ever need to._

"_So Gan Fall and one of the priests killed each other?"_

"_No. Gan Fall is down but the other one wasn't fighting Gan Fall, he was fighting the blue-sea people." Aisa explained, in spite of the vague nature of her perceptive abilities, she could clarify that much at least. "and that fire-guy you mentioned? he definitely doesn't seem pitiful."_

_Wiper chose to ignore Aisa's quip_. "_Then this is the time. The Exiled God has fallen, one of Enel's innermost circle has fallen, the ancestors have given us a sign! And we will take it! We will take back our home!" once again Wiper's speech was met with raucous cheers, As he began to gather up his weapons and other assorted gear, the warriors of Shandora followed suit, this was their best chance in a lifetime, and it would not go to waste._

* * *

"Luffy?" Katara's voice emanated from the back of the Waver where she was healing Zuko.

"Yea-" Luffy turned to face Katara but was promptly interrupted by a punch to the face.

"Next time you feel the need to propel yourself at terminal velocity, do it alone." Katara growled, fist still extended. She was referring to the fact that, as it turned out, Zuko's body, not possessing the properties of rubber didn't handle the impact with Satori quite as well as Luffy had. The fire-bender had been lucky in that he got away with a mild concussion, and only one broken rib, he had also damaged his chi-pathways too, but not as badly as he had done earlier.

"Sure." Luffy just nodded, seemingly not fazed, Katara didn't punch anywhere near as hard as Nami usually did,

"Sorry to go and burden you again Katara." Zuko added sheepishly.

"Yeah, for future reference, if Luffy reckons _he_ can pull something off without getting hurt, that doesn't necessarily mean you can too." Katara lectured, seemingly annoyed that she even needed to explain this particular concept. "Try to remember that, will you?" Katara then fixed him with the most terrifying facial expression he had ever seen her wear, surpassing even the time when she threatened to kill him if he betrayed them, 'ah, good times.'

"Um…Yes…Noted." Zuko gulped, having learned two things from his time spent as a technical part of the Fire Nation navy. the first? Never piss off the ship's cook, which he had already done in this instance, blast if he knew how though. Second? never piss off the ship's medical staff, although in the instances where he did get on Katara's bad-side there was always a reindeer-shaped contingency plan.

Shortly after, the Waver emerged from the forest as the Milky Road led them into a wide-open plain.

"Wow. This field is big." Luffy summarized simply.

"Best bet is this is the site of the next ordeal, so keep your eyes peeled guys." Sanji said, while scanning the horizon for potential attackers.

"Which ordeal though?" Usopp internally debated, "I don't see any swampland so it's got to be string or iron, right?"

"Relax, it's just a grassy field…" Luffy offered, looking bored.

Usopp's only reaction was to slap a palm to his face.

"Luffy, look around, there's skulls mounted on pikes!" Zuko said, gesturing around them as what had appeared to be large flowers from a distance had now been revealed as something far more morbid.

"The skulls must belong to people who failed the ordeal here." Katara theorized, looking somewhat disgusted.

"Which brings us full circle, what ordeal is it?" Sanji asked rhetorically.

"Does it matter?" Luffy asked, suddenly looking interested. "We need to beat_ all_ the ordeals right? So it's not like the order matters."

"Luffy's got a fair point, actually." Zuko said, before suddenly going wide-eyed at the once-in-a-lifetime sentence he had just uttered.

The group's continuing discussion was interrupted however, by a massive explosion from the treeline on their right. Black smoke billowed upward, obscuring their view of the cause.

"NO! They're going to hit us with all three ordeals at once!" Usopp yelled with tears in his eyes.

"That does raise the question of why they didn't do that in the first place." Zuko added, pondering why someone who was apparently a God would work in such an indirect and inefficient way.

It was at that point that four figures burst out of the smoke, soaring over the top of the Waver. All four of them appeared to be wearing tribal clothing, Katara then noted in horror that one of them was pointing a familiar tube device at them, a bazooka. Without any warning, the man fired. Eliciting a scream from Usopp. Luffy responded quickly by inflating himself, to deflect the projectile, which exploded some distance away.

Their assailants landed on the opposite treeline, staring at Luffy in wonder after the bizarre feat he had just pulled. The apparent leader began to speak, threatening the group with death if they continued along their current course; Sanji stated that the leader appeared to be the same man who had attacked them when they first emerged on the White Sea, to which the others agreed.

While Usopp attempted to prevent Luffy from responding to these threats, Katara took in the leader's appearance, oddly he had a similar hairstyle to Sokka, albeit narrower and longer, he had also either painted or tattooed himself with tribal markings, this was definitely the same person who they had fought on the Merry.

"You need to get off of Upper Yard Blue-Sea dwellers!" The man resumed his threats. "You have no place here! This is between us and Enel!" on that note the man turned and leapt further into the forest and out of sight, with his companions following suit.

"They referred to Enel as an enemy…" Sanji noted.

"Looks like things just got more complicated." Zuko summarized, for the second time in a matter of moments, the group was in full agreement.

* * *

Invigorated from the revelation about Upper Yard's true nature, Nami stood at the head of the group which was now returning to the Merry, behind her, Zoro and Toph were trading combat stories.

"…nope, never lost a single official fight." Toph spoke proudly, referring to her time fighting at the Earth Rumble. "In fact I've only ever been beaten in a proper fight once since I found out I was an earth-bender, and that was against Twinkle-toes."

"Twinkle-Toes?" Robin snorted, amused.

"Aang. Pretty sure we've mentioned him before, he's the Avatar." Toph rectified. "Airbenders aren't exactly something I'm well equipped to fight, let alone an airbender with spiritual stuff on his side."

"Well, I guess I go one worse on that record, I've only ever lost to two people." Zoro explained. "Dracule 'Hawk-Eyes' Mihawk, unanimously considered the greatest swordsman in the world, the other was…" at this point Zoro trailed off, suddenly looking distant to the eyes of Robin and Nami.

Despite not being able to see his downturned expression, Toph got the hint, and didn't ask about this 'other' person. Instead she changed the topic.

"So what's up with her?" she said, pointing at Nami, wondering why the navigator who had been all doom-and-gloom not 10 minutes prior, was now suddenly walking with such a spring in her step.

"Hmm?" Zoro seemed to break out of his trance. "Oh, that. I guess her sense of greed is stronger than her sense of fear."

"Well I'm sorry that I don't have superhuman strength, devil-fruit powers or the ability to manipulate the elements!" Nami snapped back, seemingly annoyed at the 'fear' jibe.

"You could at least try to not slow us down as much though." Zoro vented, having been mostly patient up until now with Nami's crazy mood swings. "You beat that girl in Alaba-"

"Quiet." Robin interrupted sharply, gesturing towards Toph, who had stopped, and was now kneeling with one hand placed on the ground.

Toph had stopped short a moment after Zoro and Nami had started arguing, she felt a few vibrations coming from the underbrush to her left, and they were getting closer, it wasn't anyone familiar either. She turned towards at Zoro, before turning her head subtly towards where she felt the vibrations.

Zoro understood the signal, and immediately drew two of his three swords; Simultaneously Toph slammed a palm downwards, causing a large pillar of earth to jut out from the ground where she sensed the vibrations. The angle of the pillar was intended to knock their potential assailants into the open. In that regard, it worked.

Four men in tribal clothing burst from the trees unwillingly; these assailants quickly jumped back to their feet and stared down the Straw-Hat group.

"You reckon this is the girl we're looking for Genbo?" one spoke up, directing his question at a rather obese looking man wearing a short leopard-pelt jacket, a yellow/white striped chef's hat, and a strap running from shoulder to hip. Over his shoulder he was carrying a bazooka.

"I think that should be obvious from how she just attacked us, Doru." 'Genbo' replied with a flat expression. "So this is the girl who can control Vearth." his expression turned serious.

"Yeah, so what if I can?" Toph asked, stepping forward, wondering how these people had prior knowledge of her earth-bending.

"We're going to give you one chance, as our leaders believe you to be somewhat of a 'prophetic sign.' leave these Blue-sea people behind and join us against Enel, or you die!" Genbo threatened.

"Umm… neither…" Toph replied, looking confused as she pondered what was meant by 'Prophetic sign', Robin and Zoro looked equally confused while Nami recoiled immediately having figured out where this conversation was going.

"What do you mean, 'Neither'?" Genbo asked, his expression turning sinister.

"We're gonna kick Enel's butt ourselves, I don't want to join you based on some 'destiny' mumbo-jumbo and I don't _need _to do it either. Because even if I refuse, it's not like you can kill us anyway." Toph spoke deliberately and with cold confidence, she didn't even waver for a second at the prospect of joining this new party even if she had no idea why they wanted her.

As Nami ran backwards to find cover, Zoro, wearing a bloodthirsty grin, brought both of his swords to his side, preparing to charge. Robin crossed her hands over her chest, and on a unanimous signal, the fight began.

"Dos Fleur!" Robin immediately sprouted a pair of hands from the shoulders of one of their adversaries to wrap around his neck. "Clutch!" with a resounding crack, she jerked both hands backwards.

She was then forced to duck as a cannon shot flew towards her face. She turned to face the shooter, only to see he had reloaded quickly and was aiming at her again, before he could squeeze the trigger however, a glint of metal, and a flash of green blurred in front of him. After one second, his bazooka fell to the ground, cleanly bisected lengthways. He turned to see Zoro staring him down, smirking. And then saw black.

Having knocked the man out using the back of his Yubashiri, Zoro then scanned the battlefield, seeing another man aiming at a rifle at Toph, who was busy dodging short range sword slashes from Genbo, whose cannon lay forgotten on the ground, looking like it had somehow folded itself inside out, he quickly moved and defeated the man with one quick vertical slash to the chest.

Genbo was perplexed, after the woman had utilized her devil fruit powers and set the battle into motion, he had immediately tried to end it with one cannon blast while the group were still clustered, he had been beaten to the punch though as the girl he had been sent to evaluate/kill had shot a football sized rock at his stomach, then leapt forward while he was winded, and immediately clasped both hands on the barrel of the cannon, then rotated her hands backwards, twisting the metal into itself, when he attempted to counter with his sword she jumped away and out of reach.

'How did she do that? That cannon is made of iron! But to her it may as well have been a twig!' enraged, he discarded his now useless cannon and charged, launching diagonal slash after slash at Toph, who continued to back off, dodging each swing, smiling as she did it.

Toph waited for her chance, waited for her opponent to make a mistake, because no matter how skilled a fighter was, everyone made mistakes eventually. As she dodged another slash she felt a more solid vibration from his feet this time, his feet were planted in a heavy way, he was committing to this strike.

'Now!' the chance had arrived, Genbo had attempted to end things with a strong vertical slash, which Toph sidestepped, moving to her right, his sword ended up stuck in the ground, and as he attempted to free it, she struck. She launched one rock to the stomach, winding him and keeling him over, then another to his right foot, bringing him to one knee, then, taking three steps forward, she quickly encased her left arm in hundreds of small shards of rock. Coming side to side with the obese warrior, she ended the fight with an elbow to the back of the head.

For a few moments the only sounds were of Toph dismantling her rock gauntlet, Zoro sheathing his swords, and applause from Robin who had been spectating the fight since the opening gambit.

"'Come with us or die' my ass!" Nami summed up the group's thoughts on that encounter. "they were useless!"

"Coming from the girl who is _still_ hiding behind a tree?" Zoro snapped back, "But you're right. They were pathetic… each one of us, barring Nami, could have beaten all four of them solo if we wanted to."

"I swear that guy's heart-rate doubled when I broke his Bazooka!" Toph laughed.

"Still wondering why they were so interested in your earth-bending to be honest." Nami pondered, examining the clothes of their unconscious assailants.

"It's not like they can do anything about it now though." Zoro added, sheathing his swords.

"They mentioned 'leaders' so obviously they aren't alone." Robin pointed out. "We should go back to the ship, quickly."

and with that, they departed, leaving the unconscious warriors behind.

* * *

"This is Awesome!" Luffy's yell went long and loud as the Crow moved along the Milky Road, which was had gone into a sharp descent in a whirling pattern. Meanwhile Usopp lay on the deck in the foetal position, Zuko was just bracing himself against the steering wheel, Sanji looked utterly indifferent, and surprisingly Katara was actually enjoying the ride.

'It's just like Penguin-sledding back home!' she recalled fondly, then was immediately broken out of her reverie as thoughts of Penguin-sledding led both to thoughts of Aang and of time spent with Sokka as children.

Zuko noticed her change in expression as their descent began to slow down.

"Something wrong Katara?" he inquired, somewhat worried at the dramatic shift in her persona, he noted Luffy turning away in an odd moment of consideration for their privacy, Usopp was still on the ground going foetal.

"Yeah…" Katara looked down towards her feet. "It's just… I've been thinking."

"About?" Zuko left the steering wheel to Sanji as he went to sit down next to Katara, vaguely hearing a mumble of 'Shitty Swordsman number two' as he switched places with the cook, not even attempting to dignify that oddity with a response; he focused his attention towards Katara.

"We might never find Aang or the others." Katara looked back up towards Zuko, her eyes were watering, "This world is just as big as the one we left, millions of people live here, how are we supposed to find them amongst all of that? We don't even know how many of us ended up here!"

"We've just got to hope for the best I guess…" Zuko offered.

"Hope for the best?!" Katara snapped back.

"Yeah, what else can we do?" Zuko stayed calm, knowing that Katara was just frustrated with the situation and that having two angry people on the Waver certainly wouldn't help matters. "We've just got to keep moving, and hope for the best.

"But, don't you reckon we should just stop travelling or something? I can just imagine stuff like Sokka showing up in Jaya right now, we might just keep on missing them if we keep moving!" Katara had obviously been lingering on these thoughts for a while.

"I don't know either way to be honest." Zuko concluded honestly "For now let's focus on the friend's we _can_ find, Toph can't be too far away now."

"Toph?" Katara's eyes suddenly brightened up.

"Yes, Toph, you know, one of your best friends? Dark hair? About four foot and nine inches tall? Likes to punch people?" Zuko replied, clearly confused.

"No, No. Toph said something just before we hit the Knock-up stream." Katara suddenly started grinning, eliciting further confusion from Zuko. "About wanting to get a high bounty, remember?"

"Yes..." Zuko gestured to continue. "Where are you going with this?"

"If we continue to travel with the Straw-Hats we're gonna end up in fights, and eventually we should pick up bounties right?"

"NO!" Zuko had finally picked the thread she was following.

"Why not? With high bounties the government will be reporting on us, our recent locations would be known, that'd make it easier for the others to _find us instead!" _Katara looked pretty pleased with herself. "So we do what Toph said! Earn bounties around 100 million beris!"

"And that will also make it easier for the MARINES to find us!" Zuko could see the logic in Katara's plan, but it still seemed like a risk.

"We're with the Straw-Hats anyway, so we'll run into marines regardless!" Katara added, she always had been exceptional at winning arguments. "But if we get our own bounties that will just be a beacon to people who actually _know _us!"

"I…huh… that's actually… pretty solid." Zuko was forced to concede. "But wouldn't having higher bounties on the crew increase the pressure on Luffy?"

"He's got a point." Usopp added in, seemingly recovered as the Waver had reverted to its normal pace. "There was this pirate back in the East Blue, guy called Don Krieg, he wasn't that strong, but he had a big bounty because of the strength of his crew. The marines follow a 'chop off the head and the body dies' ideal."

"…We can't do it then…" Katara looked forlorn as her plan was seemingly punctured. "we can't risk everyone else's lives like that."

"I don't mind." Luffy said simply, ignoring the stunned stares from Katara and Zuko, he continued. "You guys are my friends, if I have to fight the entire world government at once to help you guys then I will." he finished as simply as he had started, there were no semantics to debate, no room to maneuver, no complex decisions in his eyes. they were his friends, so he would help them, end of story.

At that point neither Katara nor Zuko knew what to say, Luffy was willing to take the brunt of the marine's attention just to help them.

Sanji and Usopp just smiled. Idiotic moments aside, Luffy was the king of winning people's loyalty and trust. The people that followed him did so for strong reasons.

Zuko in particular was stunned, 'How can this goofy kid just suddenly switch to being such an inspiring leader?' he noted that he had mentally referred to Luffy as a kid, despite the two being the same age, but in all honesty the term seemed justified. Luffy behaved like a child, he had the interests of a child, he had the attention-span of a child. But was there more to him in terms of being a leader? Zuko decided then and there. That'd he'd at least stay with the straw-hats long enough to see what made Luffy tick.

Katara smile was radiant,, wondering how a person so simultaneously selfish and selfless could ever come into existence, here Luffy was, claiming that he would take the weight of the world on to his shoulders to help them, he would risk his life, and he would risk his goal, the goal which his one-track-mind was utterly committed to, in order to help the two, now three, random benders he had found in the ocean and on Jaya respectively.

The two benders reached an instant conclusion as to what they needed to say.

"Thank you. Captain." The tone from both of them was deliberate and confident, for all intents and purposes, as long as they were in this world; they were Straw-Hats, through and through.

The subdued atmosphere lasted for a few minutes before Sanji came out with a warning,

"There's another dip up ahead guys, brace yourselves." At the cook's words, everyone prepared for the drop-off, Luffy however decided to jump to the front of the Waver and wrap around the figurehead shouting in excitement.

"And he's back to child-mode…" Zuko and Katara deadpanned.

The Waver began its descent.

"This is Awesome!" Luffy shouted.

"Déjà vu anyone?" Sanji remarked, receiving unanimous nods in response.

"Wait a second… " Zuko paused, Peering ahead of the Waver "What are those?" He pointed down ahead of them, where the Milky Road seemingly spread out into a cloud lake, where numerous dark shapes could be seen.

"Oh, those are just some Sky-Sharks." Usopp replied pleasantly. "Wait… THOSE ARE SKY-SHARKS!"

Luffy could only grin in response.

* * *

"Chopper! Are you there?" Nami called out desperately from the shore towards the ship, still stranded on the middle of the Altar, to the group's horror the mast of the ship was missing and with other signs such as smaller bits of damage across the Merry's hull it looked like a battle had taken place.

Sensing the atmosphere, but having no way of telling what was causing it, Toph asked Robin what had happened, as Zoro and Nami continued calling for Chopper.

"The ship's bordering on destroyed and Chopper is nowhere to be seen, he might be dead." Robin summarized.

"Right…" Toph reeled back slightly. She liked Robin, and trusted her, but that 'bearer of dark possibilities' thing she occasionally had going was somewhat creepy, that vague fear was second fiddle to concern for Chopper though, 'we shouldn't have left him by himself!'

"Hi…guys…" a timid but familiar voice spoke from the direction of the ship.

"Chopper! You're okay!" Nami cheered, everyone else breathed a collective sigh of relief, but simultaneously noted that Chopper was wearing a fair number of bandages.

While the rest of the group exchanged pleasantries, Toph was distracted by a familiar voice shouting from the other side of the lake.

"Gomu Gomu no Gatling!"

The shout was immediately followed by several familiar sounding anguished roars coinciding with the sound of several harsh punches landing on flesh. Toph recognized the sounds and immediately grinned.

"Took them long enough."

"Huh?" Nami immediately looked to Toph, having not yet heard the one-sided battle of rubber man versus nature, partially due to conversing with Chopper, partly due to Toph's advanced hearing.

"Luffy's here." Toph continued to smile as she pointed to where she had heard the sounds coming from.

The Waver hit the cloud lake at an angle and then evened out, momentarily submerging those on board.

the arrival of Luffy's group was greeted like the homecoming return of a heroic conquering general. Katara immediately scanned around and when she saw Toph she let herself breathe a sigh of relief.

After a quick couple of trips on the Waver everyone was reunited on the Merry.

"Where's the mast?!" Usopp opened up the most obvious of a long line of questions that needed to be asked.

"I was attacked by this priest guy…" Chopper began nervously, "I tried to stop him but he just kept burning everything." The reindeer had tears forming in his eyes.

"Are you hurt?" Usopp's question stopped Chopper cold before he continued, "It's just as well he set the mast on fire and not you right?" Usopp continued with a half-hearted smile, he was truly glad that Chopper was safe, but the damage done to his beloved ship was extremely heavy.

Chopper was now crying, grateful for Usopp's concern he yelled out a promise that he would be more dependable from then onward.

"Toph?" Katara walked up towards the upper deck, where Toph was situated, attempting to grab the earth-bender's attention. When Toph turned towards her she attempted to continue. "About earlier, I'm sorr-"

"Nothing needs to be said Sugar-Queen…" Toph interrupted with a smile. "You were just looking out for me, I know that."

"But still, I should have been more tactful…" Katara pleaded apologetically

"Maybe," Toph snorted before falling into full-fledged laughter, she actually took some pleasure from how overly-apologetic Katara was being right now.

"What's so funny?" Katara asked in a slightly annoyed tone.

"You." Toph laughed out. "You go out of your way to look after people, then apologize when you've done nothing wrong, it's just funny, I think 'Sugar-Queen' might be the most fitting name I've ever given someone, Although 'kiss-ass' would have worked too."

"Hey!"

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry too." Toph had stopped laughing but still wore a serene smile, which quickly turned into an awkward one as she continued, "I guess I kinda overreacted…slightly…it's just... frustrating to feel so useless."

"I hope you know that none of us, not back home or on this ship have ever considered you useless." Katara noted soothingly.

"I know, it's just..." Toph looked away for a moment, seemingly gathering herself up. "when i don't have my 'sight' it just reminds me of what I was treated like before I learned earthbending, back when it was just my _parents_. I don't want you guys to think of me the same way _they _do."

"We never will." Katara added. "You'd kick our asses if we did."

"Damn right."

This time it was Katara's turn to laugh. "So, we're cool?"

"Yeah, we are."

The two stepped down onto deck together just as Luffy asked Chopper how he had survived supposedly fighting a priest, Chopper explained that he had used the safety whistle that had been given to them to summon Gan Fall, and that he had prevented Chopper from being killed but had been injured in the process, this resulted in the entire crew having a brief gathering inside the Merry where the Sky Knight was resting.

"It's crazy, he gave us that whistle for free, and was still willing to risk his life." Luffy stated sombrely to a response of unanimous nods from the rest of the crew

Katara then attempted to do her best to aid the healing process using her water-bending.

"All I can really do is speed up the rate at which his cells replicate, at least for now." Katara stated, annoyed with herself. She was a reasonable healer overall, but times like this made her really realize that, while the number of water-benders who could match her in combat forms could be counted on one hand, she had a long way to go in the art of healing.

"That will help a lot in the long run." Chopper replied cheerfully as he prepared a few advanced batches of Toph's sea-sickness medication.

Seeing Chopper preparing medicine reminded Katara of something she had thought of earlier.

"You wouldn't happen to know how to make a medication that can _slightly_ increase heart-rates would you Chopper?" Katara made sure to stress that she was only talking in slight terms.

"I do know how to make some mild anabolic steroids, yeah." Chopper asked, before turning towards Katara with a curious expression, "Why do you ask?"

"Two reasons, both tied towards bending." Katara briefly explained the concept of Chi to Chopper before moving on. "As long as we keep on getting into tough fights in this world, Zuko, Toph and I run the risk of doing permanent damage to our chi circulation." Chopper was nodding, perfectly able to keep up with the somewhat unfamiliar concepts as long as they could be grounded with simple medicine. "Increasing blood pressure actually has a simultaneous gradual effect on improving the capacity for Chi circulation. The second thing is that it can also aid in recovery when you move beyond that capacity. I should probably give a decent dose to Zuko, he went beyond that limit twice today."

"Sure, I'll mix something up, it'll need to be mild, blood vessels can only take so much." While other crew members such as Nami and Robin were outright geniuses in navigation and literacy/history respectively, and Zoro, Sanji, Usopp and Toph also had a fair deal of intelligence, with Luffy also being exclusively a combat genius, Chopper was glad that he had another medically in-tuned mind to have conversations with. Not having one around would have made him miss Doctorine more.

Luffy, who was nearby, had also managed to pick some of the more simplistic terms out of the conversation, particularly: 'Higher heart-rate = more power.' A simplified concept perhaps, but one he felt he could use.

* * *

Meanwhile, outside Toph had found Zuko outside, staring intently at the Altar.

"Hey Sparky, take this medicine, Chopper made it for you, in Katara's words 'it should prevent any long-term side-effects of the damage you did to your chi flow' or something." When Zuko didn't respond Toph punched him on the shoulder, which was a successful method of getting his attention.

"Hey!" Zuko yelled, outraged.

"Take this. Chi medicine equals good." Toph replied patronizingly, seemingly not giving a damn about Zuko's indignation. "What were you spacing out about anyway?"

"This Altar…" Zuko resumed his staring, while taking the medicine from Toph's hands. "There's something familiar about the glyphs on it."

"You probably just saw some similar ones on the way in and forgot about them until now, it's probably nothing." Toph offered, she certainly didn't recognize the glyphs from anywhere they had visited prior to Sky Island, and she felt that if she had encountered the glyphs before, she would have remembered, the glyphs here were carved, meaning that it was one of the rare instances of 'writing' that she could actually interpret. "Maybe it was somewhere you were before me and Katara found you."

"That can't be it; I hardly left Jaya before I re-united with you guys." Zuko clarified. "I haven't really left Jaya since we… since we were in our own world." The fire-bender finished, looking contemplative.

"Well considering this island _is_ Jaya, it might have some common elements." Toph smirked, expecting a strong reaction from this revelation, but being bitterly disappointed when Zuko seemed too distracted to absorb what she had just said properly. Toph had still picked up on the implication that Zuko was dropping, the implication that perhaps he had seen these glyphs back home. To that end she had an idea, "Hey Katara!"

"Yeah?" Katara poked out from the door into the cabin.

"Do you recognize these Glyphs from anywhere besides Skypiea?" the earthbender asked

"Nope…" Katara said simply. "Don't think I've seen anything like them before we arrived here."

"Right…" Zuko conceded, still racking his brain looking for the answer as to why this Altar looked so familiar, and coming up with nothing.

"Your brain's gonna explode in there Sparky, just stop thinking about it for now." Toph joked before noting something else. "Is it getting late or something? Feels like it's getting colder."

"Yeah, night's falling now." Katara responded, "We should probably find out what our next move is."

It turned out, that the next move for the Straw-Hats was depart the Merry for reasons of not wanting the ship to be caught in the battle if the group was attacked, so they used the Waver to cross over, first Katara and Chopper crossed with the still unconscious Gan Fall and his injured bird Pierre, who refused to leave the Sky-Knight's side, then Sanji, Zoro, Nami, Zuko and Toph, then Usopp, Luffy and Robin. They decided to set up camp nearby and have a barbecue, main course: Sky-Sharks. As the last group on the waver departed onto the shore, Usopp looked back up towards the Altar.

"First thing tomorrow I'm gonna have to start fixing her up." Usopp groaned before pausing, seemingly struck by an idea, "Hey Toph, in the morning do you think you could lend me a hand fixing up the Merry? Your metal-bending would really help!" Usopp thought of how easy it would be to do metal patchwork with someone who could manipulate metal.

"Sure, don't see why not." Toph yawned.

Robin then pointed out that she could no longer hear the sounds of battle running throughout the island, which Toph agreed with. Making the group decide that whoever the tribal warriors were, they must have retreated for the night.

In the end, the entire group shared what information they had gathered, including how the priests, both Satori, and the one Chopper fought who was named Shura, had use of an ability called Mantra, which allowed them to predict enemy moves. Other discussion topics included the mysterious third entity that had joined them on the island, the group of mysterious tribal warriors.

"If all of them were as weak as the ones we fought then they shouldn't be too much of an issue." Zoro pointed out.

"You fought them?" Katara asked, surprised. "The group we encountered didn't seem to have any active grudge against us, they only threatened us."

"Yeah, for whatever reason they seemed pretty interested in Toph's earth-bending, wanted her to join them or something, how they knew about it beforehand we have no damn idea." Zoro replied while helping himself to another massive Sky-Shark Skewer.

"We kicked their asses, so it doesn't really matter." Toph pointed out, "seriously, I think the one I fought was the leader of their team, yet he was weaker than most of the earth-rumble guys back home, it was kind of boring really." At that point Luffy attempted to make a grab for the Skewer in her hand, her response was to bring up two small pillars of rock and trap his outstretched hand between them.

"No fair!" Luffy, after being given a moment, realized his oversight, trying to grab food from Toph while her back was turned was essentially the same thing as grabbing food when she was looking right at him. His abilities to pinch food finally had a true test.

"Like I was about to say." Toph continued, opting not to free Luffy's arm just yet. "It doesn't matter if they want my earth-bending or not, because I'm not gonna join them."

"It's odd. They've seen my waterbending in action, and Zuko's firebending, why are they only interested in Toph's earthbending?"

"Jealous, Sugar Queen?" Toph said with a cheeky grin, at the moment she said that, Toph moved the two pillars that had been restraining Luffy's arm away from each other rapidly, Luffy, who had been trying to pull his hand free ended up punching himself in the face with elasticated force knocking himself flying from his seat.

After some speculation Usopp summarize their points, writing them down on a chalkboard.

"Ok, first things first, the Priests, first one was named Satori, used weird traps inside cloud balls, second one was named Shura, has a lance which can set things on fire with simple contact, and a bird which can breathe fire, Right?"

Katara, Zuko, Sanji, Usopp and Chopper all nodded, remembering their battles, Luffy was too busy stuffing his face with another Sky-Shark.

"And there's another group involved, some tribal guerrillas using Cannons, who aren't as strong as the priests but are far more numerous?" Usopp continued, to a response of more nods, this time from Zoro, Toph and Robin.

"And finally…" Usopp paused for dramatic effect before continuing in a showman tone. "The city of gold isn't 1000 leagues below the sea as we first thought, but is actually up here on Upper Yard?"

"Correct!" Nami cheered, eyes turning into Beri symbols again.

"It scares me when she's like this." Katara noted. Zuko nodded in agreement.

"There's something else." Chopper decided to add. "when the south bird saved me and Gan Fall they referred to him…" Chopper paused, taking a glance at the Sky Knight. "They said he was God!"

This prompted confused reactions from the crew in general, but they decided that until Gan Fall woke, they wouldn't have any real answers.

At that point Sanji requested aid from Toph and Zuko for something relating to the next batch of food he was cooking.

"What's with the rock?" Toph inquired as she walked over, referencing a large surprisingly spherical polished stone next to the cooking pot.

"It's a boiling rock." Sanji replied enthusiastically.

This prompted a slightly horrified shiver followed by a swift recovery from Zuko, thinking along the lines of: 'No, it's not _that_ boiling rock.'

"Right, Zuko you need to ignite the rock and then we leave it for a minute to heat up." Sanji explained. "Then after it heats up Toph-chan can drop it in the pot." Upon seeing their slightly questioning expressions he added that the rock was completely clean, and was used to help distribute the heat more thoroughly throughout the contents of the pot.

"You're the chef…" Toph said, as she began to levitate the rock so that Zuko could set it on fire without also igniting the tree-roots below it.

After a short while the meal was ready, and Sanji began serving out amongst the crew who had continued their discussion.

"Now, does anyone remember what Noland said in his logbook about the city of gold?"

"I do!" Luffy yelled, raising a hand. "He said that it's a city made out of gold!"

"Can't say he's wrong…" Katara offered bemused, as the other eight people present as well as Gan Fall's steed Pierre slapped a palm, or wing, to their faces, with the exception of Robin who merely chuckled before continuing herself.

"He said that the city of gold is in the skull's right eye, not sure what he meant though."

"Correct!" said Nami, "and with some luck involved, we can be the ones to find it, come look at this."

On her command the crew came over and watched as she produced both a map of Skypiea and a map of modern Jaya, she then lined up the northern side of the Jaya map with the southern side of the map of Skypiea, overlapping the two to produce what was supposedly the original shape of Jaya before it split.

everyone present gasped upon seeing what the two maps formed. with one exception.

"Yep… gotta say I'm not a huge fan of maps…" Toph said with a sigh, as all she could perceive was Nami moving two pieces of paper, the contents of the paper being indiscernible.

"Sorry Toph, The two maps together form a skull-shape." Nami elaborated apologetically. "From the skull perspective the right eye would be this point to the west, whereas we are currently just camped off the other eye. In other words, We head a few miles or so west and we will find the city of gold!" she finished, once again getting a gleam in her eyes.

"Sounds fun!" Luffy cheered.

"we're going to need to split into two groups." Nami continued "one will take the Merry back along the river, both to get Gan Fall out safely and then to circumnavigate the island, coming around to the west coast, where they'll pick the other group up."

"I'll go with that group." Katara added "as long as we're following the River I can use my waterbending."

"And I'll go with the other group," Toph continued. "Who better to find a city of gold among rocks than a person who can locate and bend both?"

In the end the groups ended up being: Nami, Usopp, Sanji and Katara with Gan Fall and Pierre on the Merry. And Luffy, Zoro, Robin, Toph, Chopper and Zuko heading out to search for the city.

"Right! Enough planning! Let's Party!" Luffy cheered before charging off into the forest, eventually returning with an insane amount of lumber for a bonfire.

* * *

The night eventually devolved into a full-blown party, one large enough to even get the local wildlife involved, nobody even questioned when this barbecue had turned into a festival featuring the wolves that called the Upper Yard their home.

"Katara's drunk again…" Zoro deadpanned, pointing to the girl in question who was now charging a circle around the bonfire giving a similarly tipsy Chopper a piggy-back ride.

"Yeah…" Zuko, who along with Robin, was sat next to the swordsman agreed with a smirk. Knowing that in a party featuring Nami and Zoro alcohol was always going to end up being a part of the equation. "She hasn't got the best alcohol tolerance."

"Well you and Toph seem fine." Zoro pointed out, Zuko had drunk a fair amount more than Katara, and Toph had drunk an equal amount to the waterbender, finding Sake to be more to her taste than Rum. Neither of them were showing any obvious sign that they had drunk too much.

"I've had alcohol before, a bit. so i've built a bit of tolerance." Zuko begrudgingly admitted. "In the fire Navy…" he added in an afterthought. "And Toph is an earthbender, they're like the dead-opposite of waterbenders, waterbenders just go with the flow which they don't dictate as much, just like how the ocean is dictated by the wind, where-as earthbenders are more… sturdy, harder to influence, For whatever reason that philosophy seems to come out in surprising practical ways, a strong constitution being one of those ways."

"So that girl can manipulate Vearth?" the three turned to find it was Gan Fall speaking, having seemingly recovered enough to stand.

"Yes." Robin answered. "Katara and Zuko can also manipulate elements, why did you pick out Toph in particular?" Robin interrogated, before rectifying herself. "I don't mean to interrogate you, but you aren't the first person up here to take a particular interest in just _her_ bending, and I was wondering why."

"It's fine; I can understand your sentiment." The elderly man replied jovially. "You see, Vearth is sacred up here, while solid cloud can support plant-life it cannot birth it, so it is treated as a special commodity."

"They did mention something about prophetic signs." Zoro noted with interest.

"The Shandians worship their ancestors, and see certain acts as being their will being exerted from beyond the grave," Gan Fall's tone was both slightly dismissive, but also tolerant and understanding. "It is likely they perceived the girl to be a sort of 'Go-ahead' from their ancestors, but nothing more, they are a warring people and they will likely not hesitate to kill you all, including her if you interfere." Gan Fall continued to explain the danger, not wanting to be the bearer of morbid tidings, but feeling he needed to.

"We got that impression." Robin noted matter-of-factly.

"I'm sorry I cannot be of more aid." The knight finished, bowing his head.

"Don't worry about it old man, you saved Chopper and you saved the Merry, you've done more than enough." Zoro pointed out

"Well, I wish you all good luck in your endeavours tomorrow." Gan Fall added cheerfully watching as Luffy and Toph fought a tug of war over a Sky-Shark Skewer only for Katara to come out of nowhere with a whip of water to pull it over to her, this only escalated the battle.

When tales of the Straw Hats would be told later on in history, they would not refer to this legendary battle. A legendary battle of Rocks, Rubber and Water, being fought over a gargantuan, carnivorous fish carcass.

'This is an odd, but lively group.' Gan Fall surmised in his head. 'They should be fine.' He was forced to slightly reconsider the statement when after Luffy managed to gain the advantage in the Sky-Shark tug-of-war, two pillars, one made of Ice and one made of Rock were launched at him from either side, sandwiching him.

"How old are those two?" he asked, bemused, pointing at Toph and Katara. "I don't think they should be drinking."

"Toph's 13, she turns 14 in one month," Zuko said after some thought, perhaps more affected by the Sake than he realized, "Katara's 15, turning 16 in three months." He then paused again considering what he had just said before finishing "Yeah, that's correct."

Gan Fall just stopped and stared for a moment, before looking to Zoro and Robin.

"If you're old enough to fight for your life adventuring at sea, then you're old enough to drink!" Zoro stated with a shrug.

Gan Fall couldn't think of a logical counterpoint to that.

* * *

When morning came it seemed that everyone had recovered mostly from the night's festivities, there was one exception.

"Why does my head feel like a badgermole has been living in it?" A weary-eyed and dishevelled looking Katara stated as she rose out of her tent.

"Because you got hammered?" Toph replied snarkily, kneeling with the rest of the group beside the fire where Sanji was now cooking up breakfast.

"Here you go Katara-chan!" Sanji seemingly floated over to the water-bender with a plate in hand.

"Thank you Sanji." Katara accepted the plate, still slightly amused by the chef's antics.

"Sorry, but you're gonna have to eat quickly, we're setting out soon." Nami explained apologetically.

"Wait, really? I thought we were going to have to wait for Usopp to repair the Merry?" Katara pondered.

"It's already done." Zoro answered with a shrug. "Usopp checked it out earlier, someone repaired it overnight. We have no idea who. We've been waiting for you to wake up so that you could help Toph get the Merry off the Altar."

"Okay. Let's get to it then!"

* * *

"Ok, on three!" Usopp announced.

"One." Toph started to use the rock beneath the Merry to raise it somewhat higher.

"Two." Katara pulled a large amount of water from the clouds and dragged it up the steps before freezing it, layering the stairs in a thick coating of ice.

"Three!" Toph slanted the pillar she had raised the Merry on, so that the Merry would gently slide onto the ice layer, as she did this, Katara converted the ice to water. And Usopp manned the wheel. The end result was the Merry riding a slipstream of falling water, with Usopp steering the ship to turn it so that it was running forwards rather than sideways. The Merry hit the cloud lake with a resounding splash.

"Operation: Get the Going Merry off of the Altar is a success!" Usopp cheered.

with that. Katara jumped onto the Merry alongside Usopp, Sanji, Nami and Gan Fall. waving a last goodbye to Toph and Zuko who were now preparing to head into the forest with Zoro, Luffy Robin and Chopper.

"Good luck you guys! and Zuko try not to use your bending too much."

"Thanks for the concern Katara!" the firebender yelled back with a smile.

"Take care of yourself Sugar-Queen!"

and with that. the two groups set off on their respective ventures.

* * *

It wasn't long before the ground operation hit a bit of a snag.

"Hey Zoro! You're going the wrong way! We're supposed to be going West!" Luffy roared at the Swordsman while both pointing and continuing west, or at least what he thought was west.

Chopper immediately noted Luffy's mistake. 'Wait. He's going east though…'

"No you dumbass! I am heading west, that means right. Which means it's this way!" Zoro pointed directly to Luffy's right. Not quite processing that 'right' and 'west' weren't always the same heading.

Zuko just stood and stared for a few moments. "These idiots are the Captain and first mate… how am I not dead yet?"

Robin spared a laugh at Zuko's comment before aiming an inquiry at Toph. "Can you not point us in the right direction?"

"Would love to. But last time we were following the river, I could use that to get my bearings, there's no real landmarks or anything in range to use this time, and I'm not exactly handy with a map." Toph explained. Robin nodded before retracing their steps. Once she figured it out, she took the head of the formation and led the group in the correct direction.

The members of the group immediately began to voice their opinions on how little they had found, with Zoro, Toph and Luffy wondering when they would run into something exciting, and Chopper glad that they hadn't encountered anything lethal yet. Robin and Zuko didn't seem to care too much either way. Suddenly Toph's eyes went wide, within an instant she had launched herself forward from the back of their line using a pillar of earth, just as a large set of jaws snapped shut where she had just been standing.

As Toph skidded to a halt, she and the rest group immediately turned to face their aggressor. A massive snake, about 7 metres thick and longer than any of them could see, was facing them.

"How the _hell_ did I not sense that thing coming?" Toph growled. "It probably weighs more than a dozen times what Appa weighs!"

"It must have been waiting here, stationary, not giving off any vibrations." Robin guessed. Mentally filing the question, 'what or who is Appa' away for later.

They didn't have any longer to talk as the Snake launched itself at them.

"Run!" Chopper, Zoro, Toph, Zuko and Robin all cried unanimously, With Luffy tagging along, laughing all the way.

* * *

On the edge of the Island, Wiper once against stood at the head of a formation of warriors.

He was preparing to deliver a speech to his men when three other people on waver-skates suddenly appeared, with another one slung over one of their shoulders.

"Genbo where the hell have you been?!" an astonished Wiper demanded.

"we've been unconscious. and Sanso needs medical aid. Sorry Wiper. the girl's not joining, she... she defeated me by herself." Genbo admitted, ashamed.

"You're staying behind." the tribal leader delivered simply to Genbo's astonishment.

"What?! why?!" the obese warrior asked, outraged.

"you think i'm gonna let you go in against Enel's priests when you can't even defeat a child? fat-chance." Wiper growled. "Get back to the village. get your men treated, and get out of my sight!"

once Genbo slumped off Wiper turned to address his followers

"We aren't missing this opportunity. If you believe you can step over the bodies of dying comrades to continue onward in the fight, then come with me, if not, then stay behind! Today, Enel will Die!"

* * *

**A/N**** Right. Sorry for the length of time since my last update, last Friday being my birthday I have ended up sampling the delight of the PS3 game, The Last of Us, which while I have not finished it yet, is easily one of the best games I've ever played. So that's been soaking up my time.**

**I've not really got anything else to say. So hope you enjoyed the chapter. And please leave a review.**


	7. Fighting Fire with Fire

**A/N**** right. Haven't got any notices in particular. So yeah. One Piece is the property of Eiichiro Oda. Avatar is the property of Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko.**

* * *

"So, the Skypieans just invaded Upper Yard and forced the _surviving_ Shandians out of their own home?" Katara asked, mortified at what she had just been told.

"Yes. that is correct." Gan Fall, in an effort to occupy the time on their long journey back along the Milky Road had begun to tell the history of Upper Yard to the crewmates assembled. "This happened over 300 years ago, but you must understand their reasoning."

"No I don't understand, you can't justify invading and forcing people out of their homes." Katara snapped back, Nami nodded in assent, the two not realizing that their individual motives for this thought process were strikingly similar.

"You are right. I cannot." Gan Fall conceded. "But I am not justifying anything, I am explaining their reasons, however weak they may be."

Katara nodded giving the Sky Knight the go-ahead to continue his story.

"A quantity of Vearth like Upper Yard had never been seen up here before." Gan Fall explained "People were shocked, greed overtook them, the lifebearing potential of Vearth blinded them to all else , it blinded them to the plight of the Shandians who were brought up with the island, they must have inhabited it before the Knock-up stream blasted it into the sky."

"So what about Enel?" Sanji asked suddenly. "Where the hell does he come into this?"

Gan Fall seemed to glare into open space for a while, seemingly thinking back, and judging by his expression his thoughts were not pleasant ones. He proceeded to explain how Enel and his priests had invaded from another Sky Island, that the priests had enslaved the guards that used to follow Gan Fall back when he was 'God'.

"Enel is dangerous. His priests are lethal, your friends are going to need to work together and work efficiently to defeat him."

* * *

"Well… I'm completely lost." Zuko summarized at last.

After the snake had appeared every member of the group had scattered to avoid it, with its ability to seemingly melt through damn near everything with the strong acid in it's mouth even Zoro and Luffy had recommended a retreat, albeit Luffy taking it as a game, a challenge to see if he could outrun the mighty reptile.

After briefly scanning around him Zuko realized that he had no way of knowing where he was in relation to the ruins they were searching for And no idea where any of the others were.

"Now what?'" he sighs. "I can't find any damn landmarks with all these trees in the way… wait… the trees?" snapping his fingers to offer recognition to the brainwave he just received, he then rushed over to the base of the tallest tree in reach.

"These shouldn't be too hard to climb, with all these vines and all. I'd better get started."

* * *

Off in another section of the forest Toph had also set herself up a tree. However her intent was not to climb it as she stabilized herself out on a low branch hanging about 20 metres up.

"Okay. Three, two, one!" With that she jumped letting out a slight yelp, she never did like being airborne for any reason. As she hit the ground she was bombarded by 'imaging' of the surrounding area which the massive vibration she had just sent out transmitted back to her.. "Okay. Can't sense Zuko, Luffy, Zoro or Chopper, those dumbasses probably got lost!" Toph shouted in frustration.

She then took a moment to consider if that statement was hypocritical before dismissing it. 'Those guys don't have my seismic sense, they _are_ lost, I _was _lost,. Robin is off like 45 degrees to my right about two kilometres away, and there's some stone buildings a kilometre ahead of her,' at that she let a smile onto her face. 'I know where I'm going, so I'm not actually lost… "To the ruins I guess, I'll meet Robin there at least. " And with that she headed off in the direction of the buildings she had sensed.

* * *

"And that… is an impact dial." Gan Fall delivered as the crew-members assembled watched, stunned, The knight had produced a flat shell that the group immediately recognized as a dial, like the ones Pagaya and Conis had showed them, but when he explained that this one was designed for combat purposes they became interested.

Gan Fall had simply asked Sanji to hit the top of the shell, when Sanji proceeded to kick the top of the shell they were surprised to see that not only did Sanji not kick a hole straight through the deck, the shell didn't even move. The cook was then told to place the shell against a barrel on deck, and activate it, the results were explosive to say the least. As the second Sanji hit the button on the back of the dial it activated and all the force absorbed from Sanji's kick was blasted outwards, the Barrel was blown to thousands of pieces and Sanji was sent flying by the impact.

Ignoring Sanji's continuous whacks to his head for not warning him about the backlash, Gan Fall then explained about other dials used in combat.

"Heat dials like the ones used in ovens can be added to weaponry to allow a weapon to ignite whatever it touches." Gan Fall explained, the crew immediately thought of the priest Shura, who had fought against Chopper who supposedly used a lance of this design.

"Impact Dials and their much stronger cousins Reject Dials can be used to absorb attacks and re-apply them." Katara, Usopp and Sanji recalled the fight with Satori and his use of impact dials, putting Zuko down with one had been considerable, but these things even had the potential to harm Luffy! far and away the toughest member of the crew.

"Flame dials can be placed in the mouth of the user to give the appearance of their user being capable of breathing fire." Gan Fall went on, as once again the crew's thoughts strayed to Shura, reassured that if it came down to a fight with him, every member of the crew had decent knowledge of his party tricks.

* * *

After a long tree climb Zuko was now perched as close to the top of his tree as he could get, and was now scanning the horizon for any sign of movement, or any structure which even had a passing resemblance to the Altar the Merry had been stuck on.

"There!" he saw a small cluster of smaller stone buildings in what appeared to be a small clearing in the forest's canopy. "Well now I have a heading."

"And I'll have your head!"

The shout rang out from behind the firebender; he turned just in time to see a large dark winged shape soaring straight at him, and just in time to dodge a ferocious thrust from a large conical lance.

With a twisting motion his attempt to dodge carried him out of his perch as he began to fall back through the canopy, he didn't know how long he had been falling, but he certainly knew when he stopped as his back slammed hard into a branch, his body momentarily wrapping around it from the impact. Spluttering and gasping as he attempted to regain his breath, Zuko pulled himself up onto the branch in question and attempted to struggle back onto his feet.

"It looks like that hurt. Don't worry, I can make that pain stop." The same voice came again this time from above, it's owner making no attempt to hide his sinister intentions.

Zuko looked toward his attacker and though his vision was slightly blurred he immediately identified him, a man wearing what appeared to be aviator gear, a brown jacket, brown trousers, brown boots and a helmet with straps and goggles. He was riding an odd but massive purple bird, which had red plumage around its neck and a skeletal looking face.

"I'm guessing you're Shura?" Zuko demanded, recalling Chopper's descriptions.

"Correct, score one for the blue-sea scum!" Shura laughed mockingly. "Given that you're already injured, I'll give you a handicap! I won't even set up my ordeal, how does that sound?" Shura's confidence was not unfounded. "It's not like your injury matters anyway; according to Enel you don't have enough power to put me down, not without hospitalizing yourself at least!"

That raised a brow from Zuko, 'That statement was way too specific, he knows that my fire-bending is limited here…how?'

"Prepare yourself." Shura growled, raising his lance, before signalling his bird to swoop down again at Zuko.

All the firebender could manage was to dive down out of reach and avoid the bird's range, he quickly recovered and jumped back to his feet only to have the bird bearing down on him again, he rolled clear avoiding a mortal injury by the skin of his teeth, however this time Shura's lance was able to scrape a shallow cut along the firebender's cheek, which immediately ignited.

Screaming in pain, Zuko forced himself to bend the fire off of his face through sheer willpower, hearing a screech Zuko turned to once again see his attacker approach, this time the bird's jaws were wide open, fire seemed to be pooling at the edge of its mouth. With no time to dodge, Zuko relied on instinct, an instinct born in him from day one, thrusting one arm forward; he forced the fire back, back down the creature's throat.

The reaction was seemingly instantaneous, the bird appeared to pass out after letting out a ferocious screech, but it hadn't stopped moving, with a crash, the bird and its rider slammed into Zuko, knocking all three from the branches and into the underbrush below.

* * *

"So you're saying that we shouldn't damage these buildings because they're 'historically sacred?" a mocking voice resonated throughout the clearing.

"That's right. These buildings have an archaeological importance far beyond your understanding." A calmer, female voice responded.

Robin had been busy examining the structures she had found, on her way to find the city of gold, there was no material wealth to be found here, but the buildings were still historically fascinating,  
she had been immediately accosted by three men who appeared to bear a passing resemblance to goats, they had claimed to be 'Enel's divine enforcers' and informed Robin that she was to turn back or be killed for attempting to trespass on Enel's territory.

Without warning one of the three suddenly raised a rifle to his side and shot at the wall of one of the buildings, the decaying stone took heavy damage. An incensed Robin brought both arms up to her chest preparing to use her devil fruit when the soldier in question continued talking.

"If these Ruins are so sacred then God would be willing the ground to swallow me where I stood by now, or something else to that effect wouldn't he?" The soldier laughed, chalking Robin's regard for archaeology as naïve superstition.

"Actually now that you mention it…" Robin pointed to the man's feet with a smirk. The man looked down to find his legs sinking rapidly into the ground beneath him, his resemblance to a goat being complete as rather than screaming in panic, he unleashes the loudest bleating sound ever heard.

At that point the origin of this strange phenomenon could be determined, as someone stepped out of the treeline.

"Best lead-in line ever! Thank you random goatman!" Toph walked out into the open, one hand outstretched and slowly lowering as the goatman continues to sink.

"Hello Toph." Robin greeted cordially. "Cien Fleur!" without even blinking an eye she broke the necks of the other two soldiers. As Toph buried the third soldier up to his chin in earth.

"Looks like everyone else got lost." Toph stated dryly.

"That seems to happen a lot." Robin noted. Admittedly she only had knowledge of the events in Alabasta and brief recounts of the events between the Straw-Hats dismantling the baroque works operation in Whiskey Peak, and when they disappeared off the grid to go to Drum Island. "Can you tell where anyone else is?"

"Nope, everyone's out of range." Toph explained as the two began to unanimously walk onward from the ruins, leaving the last conscious soldier with only his head emerging from the ground screaming for help. "I could sense Zuko at one point but I think he started climbing through the trees."

"They may not all be smart, but they're tough enough that they won't be taken down, so they should find their way eventually." Robin theorized, Toph just nodded. "although I've never seen Zuko in action before, not seriously."

"If he can survive being on both sides of a war, let alone his crazy sister, he should be fine against these priestly assholes." Toph assured.

* * *

"That…could have gone… a bit better." Zuko summarized as he regained his senses, lying on his back on the forest floor with an either unconscious or dead fire-breathing bird lying on top of him. The two practically face to face with his right arm pinned beneath him. 'No heartbeat, the bird's dead.' Zuko felt both relief for having successfully defended himself but also guilt for having killed an animal which was only doing its master's bidding.

"You… you bastard!" Shura's voice came from the treeline to Zuko's left, as he slowly emerged, limping slightly, dragging his lance behind him. He had been thrown clear when his bird had suddenly crashed, Zuko's heart dropped, as he desperately attempted to push the heavy body off of him with his only free arm, "You killed Fuza! How dare you!"

Shura drew closer and closer, his eyes filled with malice, as he took in the death of his beloved bird, and the boy responsible who was pinned beneath the massive corpse. "No matter, I'm going to avenge Fuza here and now." the Priest growled.

Zuko pushed upwards as hard as he could, but there was no way he could move the heavy bird in time, Shura was only a few metres away.

Desperately Zuko attempted again, this time however, something caught his eye, as he had pushed the bird upward its limp jaw had opened up. Time seemed to slow down for a moment as Zuko recognized what he was seeing, underneath the bird's tongue, was a shell, a shell which had several holes in it, immediately thinking back to how the bird attacked him and the briefing that the straw hats had received from Conis and Pagaya, Zuko abandoned his attempts to push the bird off of him and quickly grabbed the shell, before, thinking fast, he aimed the holed end, sideways at Shura.

Shura's eyes widened, "Wait! you'll fry us both you foo-" his statement came to a grinding halt as Zuko pressed the apex of the shell with his thumb, then thrust his free arm and by extension, the hand containing the dial outward.

The result was that the fire unleashed from the flame dial was then focused directly at the Priest by Zuko's firebending.

Shura dived down for cover, staying prone and managing to shield himself from most of the flames as he rode out the raging storm of heat. After a matter of seconds that felt like a matter of hours, he pulled himself back to his feet, as the fiery storm seemed to have passed.

"Pretty imprecise tool you have here." The subdued voice prompted Shura to turn around, widening his eyes at what he ended up seeing.

Zuko stood albeit shakily with a sword in his right hand, bouncing the flame dial up and down in his left, he had used the reprieve while Shura had been protecting himself from the flames to free himself from under Fuza's corpse

"Seriously, mind if hold on to this? It's pretty hard to create a flame up here, but with this thing I won't need to." Zuko smirked, pleased at how he felt he had gained ground in this fight.

"I wouldn't expect to get that much use out of that particular Flame Dial." Shura sneered, having recovered from his shock, "it's almost empty, I was going to switch it out soon anyway," he gestured to his pockets, which Zuko assumed contained more flame dials.

"Likely story," Zuko pressed the shell again preparing for the fire to be unleashed so he could bend it.

Shura immediately started to bust a gut laughing as, much to Zuko's bemusement, the Dial produced little more than sparks.

Throwing the Dial aside in embarrassment, Zuko pulled out his other sword, before taking a low set stance. "Well I was gonna have to get some sword practice in at some point," he said in a resigned tone.

Shura's eyes narrowed. "No more games, from here on out, we fight to the death." he raised his lance, pointing it level with Zuko's head.

On some unanimous signal, both fighters charged, meeting at the exact midpoint of the clearing with a clash of steel, swords against lance.

Zuko slid back, his feet grinding against the ground as Shura's seemingly superior strength gained ground, the firebender dug in his left heel which was placed forward and pushed back, before moving his swords off to his right side shifting the lance in the same direction, the firebender then leaned slightly inwards and kicked out at Shura's left leg with his own left. Shura was forced to pull away to avoid being tripped.

As Shura backed up Zuko brought both his swords overhead, took a step forward and brought them slicing downwards, only to be effortlessly batted off to one side by Shura's lance, not missing a beat as Zuko attempted to regain his balance, Shura thrust his lance forward, which Zuko attempted to lean to avoid, only for the lance to nick his shoulder, ripping through his tunic. In any other fight, this would have been no big deal, but that thought process left Zuko's mind immediately as the niggling injury ignited just like it had the last time, Zuko reacted quickly and gritting his teeth to cope with the pain, he bent the fire away from his arm, channelling it directly at Shura, who was charging him down again.

Shura weaved left, watching as the stream of fire shot over his lowered shoulder, where it hit a bush and immersed it in flames, he turned back in time to see the hilt-end of a sword rushing towards his face extending from Zuko's right hand, but he could do nothing to prevent the hit.

Zuko noted the satisfying sound of impact as Shura tumbled head over heels, before crumpling to the ground momentarily.

Taking a second to catch his breath Zuko checked the wound on his still-bleeding shoulder, as Shura stumbled back to his feet.

"That should have been a fight-clincher." Shura sneered, swaying on his feet slightly, he was referring to Zuko's last attack "You move well, but when it comes time to deliver the finishing blow, you just don't have the strength for it, and that will be your downfall." The Priest charged, his eyes narrowing to tiny slits.

Zuko barely had time to prepare a defence before Shura was on him, launching rapid stabs and thrusts with his lance, Zuko moved on instinct, weaving and parrying. Sometimes he wasn't quite able to muster a defence, Zuko took several glancing blows, every time the wounds would briefly ignite, forcing him to bend the fire away before serious damage was done, which would in turn leave him open to further attacks. The whole time he had been backpedalling, forced to, as the vicious priest's attacks were too strong and too unrelenting to offer a counter-attack. On pure strength and speed there would only be one winner in this fight, he needed to think of something fast.

Zuko was broken from his strategizing as his continuous backpedalling eventually hit resistance, his back up against a tree. No room to manoeuvre behind him.

"End of the line!" Shura roared, thrusting his pole-arm forward again towards Zuko's head.

Relying on instinct Zuko quickly crossed both his swords at his chest before slamming them upwards just as the lance was approaching, forcing the angle of the attack further upwards to hit the tree-bark just above his head, which instantly ignited, as did the metaphorical light bulb in the firebender's mind.

Taking his best chance Zuko kneed Shura in the stomach, barely staggering the priest but still giving him enough time to move clear into open space.

"Your pathetic attempts to put off the inevitable are getting boring! Just learn your place and die already you worm!" Shura screamed, his expression turning feral. As he charged again, not noting the smirk on Zuko's face.

* * *

It soon turned out that Zuko's fight wasn't the only situation that had taken a sharp turn.

"Sanji!"

One instant the crew had been just attempting to find ways to pass the time on the Merry's voyage out of Upper Yard, the next, _he_ had appeared, with only a flash of light to announce his arrival.

Sanji had been the first to respond, launching a kick at the new entity, as the general response that went up particularly from Gan Fall, was that this new arrival was a threat. The kick never landed though as in another flash of light, Sanji dropped to the floor, smoke emanating from his body which had seemingly been burnt nearly to a crisp.

Nami and Katara both dropped down to check on Sanji as Usopp aimed his slingshot at the intruder, who was sitting on the ship's figurehead.

"Who are you?" the sniper cried, his eyes watering in fear as he placed a rock in his weapon.

"I hardly think that it matters who I am." The man said, before in an instant, he closed the distance to Usopp, effortlessly dodging Usopp's rock attack in the process, he placed his index finger against the sniper's head and with another flash, Usopp crumpled to the ground, looking just as badly burned as Sanji.

"Usopp!" Nami cried, staring at their attacker, he was muscular and fairly tall, wearing loose orange trousers with a sash layered over them, and a white bandana which concealed pale blond hair, oddly his earlobes appeared to have been stretched as they reached down to his chest, attached to his back was a large vertical ring than ascended past his head with four drums attached, each drum was marked with tomoe symbols.

From her position kneeling on the deck, Katara growled and then leapt to her feet, fire igniting in her eyes. Sanji was still alive; she could confirm that much, but this guy would pay for harming her friends. As quickly as she could she mustered up a whip of water from the cloud below and slashed at the attacker.

His smirk lasted up until the point of contact, where it suddenly faded, as when the water whip made contact it didn't just pass through him as he perceived it would, with his body turning to intangible electric energy, instead, it carried his electrical energy with it. Instantly realizing what was happening, he moved with the whip's direction overtaking it through pure speed and reforming his body when he was out of range.

"Well, your abilities are…problematic for me." The man droned. 'What was I thinking? Converting to electricity against someone attacking me with water? if she was faster she could potentially split up my body permanently by locking it in the water's conductive current.'

"You're like Crocodile, you can convert your body to an element can't you?" Katara realized the moment she saw his body convert. It was uncannily similar to how Crocodile could convert to sand.

"You'll know in due time."

With a start, Katara realized that the voice had come from behind her this time, 'I didn't even see him move!' but sure enough there was a faint trail of light emanating from where the man had been standing leading around to her blindside. She turned just in time to see a flash of gold heading for her, and could only hear Nami screaming her name before she saw black.

* * *

"Will you just give up already!?" Shura yelled, swinging away at Zuko who rolled clear. Shura had hardly taken a hit throughout the entire fight, as the boy he was fighting was more concerned with dodging and parrying blows, the forest around them had taken more damage than either fighting participant had, as damn near every tree around them was now ablaze.

Zuko could only smirk, he had taken several glancing blows from the lance, and the occasional punch or kick, but in spite of his blurry vision and the aches, pains and minor injuries resonating through his body, he was still standing.

"That's funny, I was just about to ask you the same thing." The firebender said jovially, the smirk still plastered to his face.

"You're delusional. You can't even hurt me. You're only prolonging your suffering!" lending action to his frustration, Shura charged, Being surprised on his approach as his opponent was not readying his weapons, but sheathing them.

"It ends here!" the priest growled.

Zuko responded by planting his front foot and spinning into a kick aimed at Shura's head, a move which Shura dismissed,

'He thinks his leg has more range than my lan-' he was broken from his thoughts as a ball of fire slammed into him carrying a surprising amount of concussive force, as he was sent sprawling. "What?!"

"There are three stages of firebending." Zuko stood calm and composed, lowering his extended leg casually as if he hadn't just turned the tide of this battle for good. "The first, is the creation of the fire. The second is the manipulation of the fire, and the third is the dissipation of the fire." The firebender continued his explanation counting each step on his fingers, before breaking into a wide smile. "Can you guess which one of those three is the most exhausting and chi-demanding step?"

Shura's eyes widened as he realized his folly. The Priest glanced around at the flames dancing through the clearing, the trees which he himself had ignited, the ammunition which he had foolishly handed to his adversary.

"Thank you for cutting out step one." Zuko laughed, before thrusting both arms forward.

Shura could only crouch and hide behind his lance as a raging torrent of fire moved to consume the ground between the two fighters, Zuko had taken a low stance, proceeding to reel the flames back and forth with slow, purposeful movements of his arms, causing the flames to twist forward, creating a vortex which battered Shura in continuing waves.

Shura could do nothing but stay defensive, the curvature of his lance was redirecting the majority of the flames, but he couldn't counter-attack yet, 'Wait until he lets up, then, I'll charge!'

After several moments, the firestorm finally ceased, Shura immediately took his chance, his lance readied, he charged across the clearing.

"Prepare to die, young fool!" The manic priest screamed. Zuko's face was cast in shadow, his head downturned, thus his expression was unreadable. "Wallowing in self-pity before you die?!" Shura taunted.

It was then that Zuko threw both hands to the hilts of his swords, his head tilting upwards to reveal a wry smirk and a fiery glint in his eyes. Then, the instant Shura was in range, he moved.

In one quick motion, he drew his swords and made to slash at the Priest before him.

'What? Does he think he can suddenly overpower me? Nothing's changed since he last tried.' Shura considered as he raised his Lance in defence, confused at the bold and seemingly pointless action from the young firebender.

His questions were answered though, as Zuko sliced clean through his Lance before slicing into the man himself, wth two deep slashes to the torso.

"Wha-What?!" Shura spluttered, as blood poured freely from his new injuries.

"That Lance was pretty tough, it isn't quite so tough when it's at its melting point though, is it?" Zuko offered dryly, gesturing to the bisected Lance which was on the ground, seemingly dripping. The firebender then pulled a strip of cloth from his pocket to wipe the blood from his blades before he sheathed them again. He Barely registered the sound of Shura clattering to the ground.

"..ha…pretty…damn.. clever you little bastard." Shura gasped from the ground. "That firestorm…did…have a purpose…"

"It was something my uncle taught me, him and his damn Pai Sho." Zuko reminisced with a smile. "When you attack, set it so that even your opponent's best possible defence leaves him open to your next planned attack… in other words, manipulate the plain till you can get them in a lose-lose situation. The only difficult part was making the flames hot enough to make that thing start to melt."

"If I had…laid out my ordeal… we wouldn't be having this conversation…" Shura thought bitterly as he started to drift out of consciousness.

"Perhaps not, but we all prepared our own countermeasures to your ordeal anyway, Chopper told us how it worked." Zuko was slightly confused at how he seemed to now be shooting the breeze with someone who had just been trying to kill him. "Your rage didn't exactly help you either."

"What?" Shura asked simply, genuinely curious.

"It doesn't look like anger and mantra get along very well." Zuko recalled Katara mentioning how Satori had seemingly been unable to predict moves when he got angry or lost focus. "We'll keep it in mind from now on, your friend abilities won't work as well when they're pissed off."

"I can't say I envy you kid." Shura delivered, his eyes fluttering noticeably. "You may have defeated me, but you can't beat Enel… he truly is… invincible, he won't make the same mistakes I did." And with that the Priest finally passed out from his injuries.

"The more invincible you think you are, the more likely you are to be surprised. You can check that one with my father." Zuko said simply as he sheathed his swords, and limped away towards the Ruins. "If you'll excuse me I'm going to go look for my friends."

* * *

Katara was only aware of an orange shape bobbing up and down some distance away through her blurred vision, as her senses started to return she could also hear a voice.

"C'mon Usopp! Breathe!"

'Right, that orange shape, it's Nami's head.' Glancing down she saw Nami's hands placed together on the chest of Usopp's prone body. A body which was practically chargrilled… Wait…

Everything flashed back instantly and Katara shot into a kneeling position, ignoring the splitting pain in her head she shoved Nami back and pulled up water from one of flasks, forming it around both her hands and proceeding to attempt to heal Usopp.

"Katara! You're okay!" Nami was beside herself with relief.

"I think so, and Usopp should be too, once I'm done here." Katara groaned, still feeling slightly light-headed, not noticing as a faint trail of blood dripped down from her forehead. She barely heard the light tap of two people touching down on deck.

"None of you are gonna be okay in a matter of minutes." Two voices, both extraordinarily high-pitched, rang out from behind the two girls.

Katara turned, a vein popping in her head, "What now?!"

She was answered by the image of two bulbous figures, who looked oddly familiar.

"I'm Hotori!" one sang.

"And I'm Kotori!" the other continued.

"And we'll make you pay…" they joined their voices together. "…For what you did to our brother Sato-"

"I do not have time for this!" Katara screamed, her expression turning manic as with two solid motions she brought up more water from the clouds, bringing it to surround the pair, before freezing it solid, leaving only their heads free.

"Even with Mantra…" Hotori groaned.

"We couldn't see that one coming…" Kotori finished. Both of them looked completely astonished at the ease of their defeat.

"I'm having a bad day, I am not gonna put up with your crap right now!" Katara shouted. Before bizarrely forcing a smile back onto her face. "Right, back to work."

Gan Fall and Nami just watched the mental break down with fascination for a few moments.

"It's good you were still conscious, with my injuries it may have been difficult to defeat those two." Gan Fall explained. "it appears that their mantra gives them some difficulty in reading and predicting your 'bending '."

"Satori seemed a bit confused too at first," Katara remembered. "But that doesn't matter, what happened while I was unconscious? Who was that guy?"

Apparently the man who had attacked them was Enel, in all his godly glory. He had proposed a challenge, a survival game, the only objective being to avoid dying for as long as possible, the prize supposedly being the gold which the Straw-Hats were searching for. he also made special note of bidding goodbye to Gan Fall, stating that he no longer had any need to stay in Upper Yard.

"We still don't know what he meant by that." Nami, on Katara's instruction had started applying an ointment from Chopper's ship inventory onto Sanji's burns. "Are you sure this is the right stuff?"

"Yeah, Chopper showed me some of his medicinal supplies last night, that ointment has anti-biotic properties, it should prevent bacterial growth and infection." Katara replied while treating Usopp's wounds with her waterbending. "Once you're done, use this to-" Katara's next instructions were cut off by two shrill yells coming from the massive ice-cubes at the centre of the deck.

"Annoyance attack!" the combination of both the pitch and volume of Hotori and Kotori's voices immediately popped another vein on the foreheads of both Nami and Katara.

"What are you yelling about?!" Nami screamed back at the pair.

"You have denied us the use of our limbs!" Kotori yelled.

"So we shall attack in a new manner!" Hotori finished. "Behold the astonishing, aggravating power of the Annoyance Attack!"

"Seriously?" Katara asked dryly.

"Yes!" They both screeched back, extending the syllable as far as it could go.

"Shut it!" Nami growled as she slammed her fists into both of their heads, silencing them as they were knocked senseless.

"These two should be okay after a while." Katara explained, referencing Sanji and Usopp, "my waterbending works best on healing flesh wounds, deep burns like this and organ damage take longer to fix."

"We seriously lucked out." Nami said with a smile "In the space of just one journey between Little Garden and Alabasta we found two of the most skilled medics I've ever met."

"I'm glad to help." Katara responded meekly, blushing at the praise. but also feeling a niggling doubt in her mind, 'i may be able to heal the damage, but Enel destroyed me, Aang, Toph and Zuko never would have lost like that. would they?'

* * *

"Robin, can we go now?" Toph whined, drumming her hands against the rock she was sitting on. Just ahead of her, Robin stood admiring a large weathered stone plaque, the plaque stood in the middle of a clearing of solid cloud, which had settled in the forest, explaining why Toph was sitting at the edge of the clearing rather than following the archaeologist to its centre where she wouldn't be able to 'see' anything. 'Ugh… this is so boring!'

Robin ignored the Earthbender, focusing entirely on interpreting the texts in front of her.

'So this city, Shandora was built around 800 years ago, to replace a destroyed civilization that had existed 100 years before that, that means, these ruins could hold the key to the void century!'

"Robin!" Toph's voice rung out again, however the archaeologist was so absorbed in her findings that she missed the sudden urgency in the Earthbender's tone. "Robin! Something's coming!"

Robin just registered those words as a massive object came flying at her, just about visible from the corner of her eye. She dodged, rolling away as the mass impacted off of the plaque.

The object it turned out, was a person, if Robin and Toph had registered the Shandorian warrior Genbo as 'obese' then this man would need a whole new word to describe his size. A sneer was clearly visible on his face, in spite of the best efforts made by his several chins to obscure it.

Robin could only stare, shocked at the man's callous disregard for priceless history, Toph had an entirely different reaction, the plaque was made purely of rock, which she would be able to sense even if it was airborne, the second their attacker had made contact with the plaque was the second where Toph no longer had to rely on sound to pinpoint his location, and an instant after the man-mountain's attack, he was launched clear again, smacked into the forest by a large boulder launched from the edge of the cloud clearing.

The man, who went by the name Yama, came skidding to a halt in another large clearing, with no clouds in reach this time, shaking his head out to clear the cobwebs, he looked back to the direction he had been launched from to see his attacker, and his original target, walking casually towards him.

"I think I'm going to be taking this one." Toph cracked her knuckles as she stepped forward. 'He has enough strength to smash stone like it was made of glass! This guy might actually finally be a challenge!'

"Go right ahead, but can you try to not do any damage to the ruins in this clearing?" Robin asked casually, as she fell into line behind the Earthbender, stopping at the edge of the new clearing.

"Sure." Toph smirked before pointing at the now-recovered Yama, "Hey fat-ass! Get ready to go toe-to-toe with the greatest Earthbender of all time!"

* * *

**A/N **** well, I covered a fair bit of ground in that chapter!**

**Overall i'm pretty happy with the _real _fight of the story, be sure to tell me what you guys think of it.**

**Oh my god though, the relation this week between Naruto and One Piece is hilarious, it appears that with every passing manga chapter, I like Naruto less, and love One Piece even more.**

**Chapter 731 of One Piece had me in emotional tears, (just in case of people who aren't up to date with the manga, I'm not gonna spoil anything here, but if you've read the chapter, you KNOW what I'm talking about.) **

**Chapter 658 of Naruto on the other hand, in combination with the last 10 or so chapters, BORED ME to tears, (again, I won't state why for reasons of spoilers, but I'm just gonna summarize by saying I'm really starting disregard Kishimoto's writing abilities and lack of creativity.)**

**Now that's enough bitching about Naruto.**

**One Piece 731 was freaking amazing, and I hope you enjoyed the chapter. please leave a review and don't be afraid to point out flaws where you see them!**


	8. An Issue of Trust

**A/N**** (insert generic pleasantries here] **

**Avatar (the real Avatar, not that Smurf-ahontas turd) is owned by Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante Dimartino.**

**One Piece is the property of Eiichiro Oda, a man whose very farts exude more creativity than most of his contemporaries put together.**

**xXx**

"Damn-it!"

A cry rung out through the forest, traceable to one lone firebender, who had momentarily stopped in his efforts to limp towards the Shandian ruins after a brainwave had hit him.

'That guy had more of those fire-dials!' Zuko berated himself, thinking back to the fight he had just survived.

"_I wouldn't expect to get that much use out of that particular Flame Dial." Shura sneered, having recovered from his shock, "it's almost empty, I was going to switch it out soon anyway," he gestured to his pockets._

"Too late to go back now, I've left him long behind." Zuko debated, breathing a long exasperated sigh, he had been walking for some time after he had defeated the priest, the distance back would be a pain to travel, that being if he would even be able to find his way back to the battle-site.

"I should probably just find Chopper, he can probably heal some of these injuries, if I get attacked in this condition I'm gonna be in trouble." Zuko had already given himself some basic first aid, most of his injuries were superficial, but he had seemingly broken a couple of ribs when he fell from the canopy. "I've still got a long way to go to get to the ruins, I hope the others are having a better day than me!"

* * *

xXx

There were several figures on Skypiea which were generally regarded with respect, or if they warranted it, fear. The top of that list surely belonged to Enel, followed by his priests, everything below that could technically be considered as inconsequential. However there was person that felt he could make the most legitimate claim to sixth place out of all of Enel's soldiers, the person in question however, was not exactly having a good day, he had noted the vast majority of the divine enforcers under his command falling in battle being overwhelmed by the Shandorians, while the Priests weren't exactly picking up the slack, and now he was in a fight himself.

"Punch Mountain!" The robust man slammed his hand downwards, aiming for his opponents head, the opponent in question, moved sideways to avoid it, riding a pillar of rock away and out of his reach as his hand smashed into the ground, causing it to shake and then splinter.

"You're pretty strong! But you're really predictable!" the cocky tone of his opponent rang out.

When he was done here and it was time to deliver his report to Enel, Yama would probably omit the fact that the opponent he was having so much time defeating… was a little girl about one twentieth of his size.

Toph took the opportunity to taunt her opponent as she racked her brain thinking. Sure, she had barely taken a hit for the duration of this fight, a couple of glancing blows here or there, a lump or two of rock shrapnel launched from his attacks occasionally getting a hit in before she could stop it. the simple fact was, Yama was not an opponent she was well equipped to face, he was too acrobatic, meaning that she could only roughly guess his landing by his trajectory, meaning that she had to dodge far further than usual to make absolutely sure that she actually was out of his range, this gave her much less time to launch a counter-attack. She felt some confidence however, in the fact that even though she couldn't see him; she knew that Yama was in a notably worse state than her.

He was definitely bleeding more than her, the occasional small vibration of a drop or two of dense liquid against the soil proving that fact, and he seemed to be walking slightly funny and avoiding the use of his left arm in his punches.

No, if this were just a matter of dealing out damage, Toph would be the clear winner. However, all the superficial advantages in the world didn't matter if she couldn't put him down for the count. And there-in lay her problem, Yama was too resilient to be floored by anything short of her best, and Toph couldn't conjure up anything large while he was attacking her, he was making sure to not give her too long to summon a significant attack, speaking of which…

"Stomach Mountain!"

Yama slammed into the ground in the form of a belly-flop, Toph, who had sensed him leaving the ground and correctly judged his momentum and his rough trajectory, had long since jumped aside, propelled again by a pillar of earth. Skidding to a halt some distance away she immediately jumped on the spot, her bare feet slamming down hard, sending out a large pulse of earth.

'Break his footing!' she repeated the first fundamental part of her combat style in her head, as the wave collided with Yama, who was just returning to his feet as the ground beneath him became wholly unstable, he wobbled only slightly, his weight being too great to displace easily.

Toph followed up with a sequence of five flat punches striking the air, in sync with each punch, five boulders, each the size of Toph herself flew forward. 'Lock him down.' she recalled the second step, one that was only necessary when dealing with a noticeably tougher opponent, she was preparing to move on to step three, when she noticed.

Yama had taken the first two hits full on, one hammering into his stomach, the other spinning off from an impact to his head, but he had managed to either bat away, or dodge the others. He was now charging again.

Toph was prepared to dodge when she realized, she was standing inches away from a large stone mural, a mural which was adjoined to a small weathered stone building, if she dodged, Yama would power through both.

"_I think I'm going to be taking this one." Toph cracked her knuckles as she stepped forward. 'He has enough strength to smash stone like it was made of glass! This guy might actually be a challenge!'_

"_Go right ahead, but can you not do any damage to the ruins in this clearing?" Robin asked casually, as she fell into line behind the Earthbender, stopping at the edge of the new clearing._

"_Sure." Toph smirked before pointing at the now-recovered Yama, "Hey fat-ass! Get ready to go toe-to-toe with the greatest Earthbender of all time!"_

Abandoning her motion to dodge, Toph quickly summoned as much rock as she could, raising it upwards quickly into a wall between her and her encroaching attacker.

The barrier crumbled away, Yama's fist ploughing straight through it, before following up into Toph's head. An appreciative grin spread onto his face as the Earthbender was sent tumbling, skidding to a stop several metres away from where she had been standing.

"Toph!" Robin's concerned voice broke from the edge of the clearing, 'why did she do that? Why didn't she just dodge again?!' Robin had been content to just observe the fight, as she felt that fighting alone was something that Toph both wanted and needed, while she had promised not to step in, she was fighting with herself to not go back against that promise.

'Wait.' Robin examined her last thought. 'A promise, is that why she didn't dodge?' Robin thought suddenly. 'She didn't want to go back on her word to me?'

Her thoughts were interrupted though, by a cough.

"Urgh… Don't worry Robin, I'm fine," Toph groaned as she stood slowly, and turned back towards Yama. "That was a good hit though! If that had hit me full-force you might have had something to brag about!" A noticeable bruise was already forming on the girl's cheek, complimented by a slow, steady streak of blood flowing from a cut above her eye; the cut had probably been obtained upon impact with the ground. She did note that if it hadn't been for the earth-wall she had formed which had taken the sting out of his punch, she would very likely be dead.

'Wait, the impact? What did I hit?' Toph slammed a foot down, instantly feeling the feedback, the mural, the building, both had been shattered. She had gone straight through the mural, the decaying stone not offering much resistance, whereas Yama's body, following up on his punch had smashed the building. Her head dropped. "Bastard… I'll get him for that…"

"Well this battle just got a lot easier for me!" Yama roared triumphantly, "How'd you expect to target me with that much blood blocking your vision?"

To his utter bewilderment, the girl simply started laughing; even the stoic woman he had attacked at first seemed amused suddenly, both being broken out of a unanimous feeling of regret for the destruction of the relics. "What's so funny?!" Yama roared, incensed at what he perceived to be a sign of disrespect.

"Ah…" Toph finally managed to regain control of her voice and breathing. "Oh, thank you for that, really, but seriously… didn't Conis say that Enel could overhear every conversation on Skypiea?" Toph directed the question at Robin.

"I believe that's true, yes." Robin noted, still wearing a jovial expression.

"Damn, Man-Mountain here must be pretty low on the pecking border if Enel didn't tell him about my… 'Circumstances'" Toph pointed out in an amused tone, throwing a cursory grin towards Yama.

A vein popped up above Yama's brow, as his temper flared, both from the apparent disrespect and from being left out of the loop.

"Multi-Punch Mountain!" the giant charged forward, his right launching into several astonishingly fast punches his arm moving too fast to be visible to the human eye. 'She's too hard to hit with strong attacks, so let's try weaker and faster!'

Toph grimaced as he approached, but found that, with some difficulty she was still able to keep up with his arm's movements, as she weaved around his blows.

While the average human would be fooled by the speed of his movements alone, thrown off by the fact that his arm seemed to be blurring due to its pace, Toph did not have that problem, at least at this range. She could distinctly feel every movement he made down to the very muscle, she could feel his arm coil before every blow, and could accurately judge the intended direction, putting her a split second ahead. The difficult part was to actually match his speed, to actually avoid the punches for long enough to field a counter-attack.

Yama was perplexed, even at top speed he still struggled to hit the girl, he mixed his punches thoroughly; hooks, straights, uppercuts, the entire works. But he still couldn't land a hit. In desperation, he decided to throw in his injured left arm too; this had no effect other than tiring him faster. He eventually relented after Toph, who had taken advantage of the slowing speed of his attacks resulting from his fatigue, had managed to jump clear and get some distance.

Both fighters took a moment to regain their breath. Both were planning their next move ahead.

'I've got it!' Toph extended both arms fully in front of her, her palms facing downwards with her index fingers and thumbs joined with their equals; she then slowly began moving her hands apart.

Yama, seeing her movements and knowing that the girl was preparing something in spite of the fact that there was no visible sign of any movement from the earth, charged forward again, launching himself at the earthbender, "Stomach Mountain!"

As soon as Yama left the ground, she jumped clear on another Earth-pillar, Yama's body slamming into the ground again, however instead of attacking Yama when she landed, she chose to mirror her last action, raising her hands together again in front of her, before drifting them apart, a wide, open-mouthed, cocky smile on her face as she did so.

Robin looked on, confident that Toph could handle herself here, at least against this man, but confused as to what she was doing, there were no visible signs of anything happening to the ground while Toph made these motions, which stood out of line with everything she had observed so far about bending. The archaeologist continued to watch as Yama launched another attack, which Toph dodged, before repeating that same motion once more.

* * *

xXx

"So, you're from the same tribe as the Guerrillas attacking the island, a Shandorian?" Nami inquired at one of the new arrivals on the scene.

"Yeah!" a little girl, who was smaller even than Toph, yelled proudly. "I'm a brave warrior of Shandora."

"Whoever you are, can you stop yelling?" Katara groaned, placing a palm to the side of her head. "My head still hurts… stupid golden staffs…"

Soon after their encounter with Enel, Gan Fall had departed on Pierre, claiming that in the midst of all the chaos he would scout out 'God's Shrine' which apparently was Enel's home, too look for the men who used to follow him, men who were now apparently enslaved. Not too long later, Nami and Katara had been intercepted by a small waver, which had emerged from the forest, a dial being used by its passengers to form a cloud current from the shore of the island. The passengers in question were Conis, Pagaya and a small girl who the Skypiean father-daughter duo had apparently rescued from a stranded waver.

The Merry was now following the cloud current that Pagaya had formed, using it as a shortcut off the island, bypassing the meanders of the one they had been following prior.

Their journey was going pretty normally when all of a sudden, the girl, who it turned out was named Aisa, hit the deck screaming.

"Aisa? What's wrong?" Nami rushed over, followed by Katara who had briefly paused to pull some water to surround her hands, being prepared in case of an injury.

"I could hear them, their voices, they vanished!" The girl replied, sobbing openly as she recalled the images and the sounds that had briefly flashed through her mind.

"What?" Katara answered succinctly, seemingly not having any answer to what she had just heard.

"Wait. Can you use that 'Mantra' thing that the priests use?" Nami inquired pausing for a moment to think.

"Yes, ever since I was born, I just keep on hearing people's voices vanish! I even see how it happened!" The girl said, her voice low and detached.

"That sounds awful!" Conis exclaimed, throwing her hands to clasp over her mouth.

"Aisa, I'm sorry to have to ask you this, but…" Katara looked uncomfortable for a second as she considered her question; she didn't want to pressure the girl into thinking of things that were obviously traumatic for her. "But, have any of our friends, the people from the blue sea, have any of them…'vanished'?"

"No." the girl replied simply, still sounding slightly upset. "Apart from those two." She said gesturing towards the still unconscious Usopp and Sanji.

"But they're alive? So a voice vanishing doesn't necessarily mean they're dead?"

"No, but it_ usually_ does, especially on this island." Aisa said bitterly. "Most of the people getting hurt are the Divine enforcer squads and…and my people." Aisa rose up from the deck slowly, looking forlorn.

'Thank goodness.' Katara breathed a sigh of relief, before feeling slightly guilty for it, she had just heard Aisa express fear at how most of her people were dying and her first reaction was to be relieved regarding the fate of her friends. She berated herself for not being empathetic; glad that she hadn't saw fit to speak her mind.

"Three of the priests are now down." Aisa decided to inform them, Partly because she felt she owed Conis and Pagaya for saving her life, and partly because she wanted to get the info off of her chest.. "Gedatsu was beaten by that Tanuki"

"Chopper." Nami confirmed. "not a Tanuki."

"And Shura was beaten by that guy with the two swords and the scar on his eye."

"Zuko!" Katara expressed, relieved that, while the firebender got into a fight, it sounded like he left it in better shape than his adversary.

"There's loads of smaller fights going on, but I can hear two 'voices' blaring louder than the others, they're fighting near the ruins." Aisa explained.

"When you say, 'hear' do you literally hear them?" Nami pondered.

"Not exactly, although that happens sometimes. It's more like I can just tell roughly where they are," upon seeing their confused expressions she elaborated further. "It's like having a compass in the back of my head, I just get this subconscious feeling pointing in the direction from where the 'voice' is coming from, and some of them are bigger voices, but even they aren't easy to find, unless they're fighting."

"That sounds like a useful ability to have in a pinch." Katara said, offering a smile.

"It… it is useful, but…" Conis stopped there, not really finding the words to continue. Katara got the gist regardless and stopped asking. She already knew what Aisa was going to say.

"Oh, by the way Nami, what do you think of this?" Pagaya decided to lighten the mood as he took Nami aside to show her the waver that they had found on board the ship that fell from the sky, It was now fully repaired.

While a delighted Nami thanked Pagaya, Katara followed Aisa to the edge of the ship, where the girl was staring out into the forest, looking helpless.

"It's not easy to be left behind when your tribe go off to war, is it?" Katara asked solemnly

"What do you know about it?" the girl snapped back, her friends were clearly a touchy subject.

"More than you could ever know." Katara answered simply.

The answer caused Aisa to pause and stare in to the eyes of the older girl before swallowing and starting to speak. "I just wish I could do something to help them return safely, But I can't! I'm not strong enough."

"I know the feeling." Katara said sympathetically, putting a hand on the girl's shoulder. "Just work hard enough so that one day, you will be strong enough to help them." Katara's voice gained an edge to it. "And beyond that…hope that soon there won't be a need for _anyone _to fight."

Aisa just stared, considering the older girl's words before suddenly throwing both hands to her head.

"Aisa? Are you okay?" Katara asked, she was glad that she now knew what caused this effect on Aisa.

"The… the girl, who could control Vearth… she." Was all Aisa could manage to mumble out before she paused needing to take a breath.

Katara's heart immediately sank, from hearing those words. 'Toph? Her voice vanished? It can't be!'

* * *

xXx

(A few minutes earlier)

Robin watched with subdued interest as Yama launched his body again, Toph clearing the impact easily by jumping left before reverting back to the same motion, raise hands, split them. Toph's tactics had eventually become clear to anyone observing the battlefield carefully, but Yama was not doing this, the pace and ferocity of his attacks had increased in a negative correlation to his focus. Why?

"Whoa, I probably would have felt that vibration from the other side of the island!" Toph leered, before dodging left again as Yama soared towards her.

"I'm going to kill you!" the intellectual might of Yama's reply was staggering.

"All that weight must have a lot of drawbacks, especially when it comes to getting a date…" Toph offered with a deceptively sympathetic tone, "But it must be useful in battle at least, or it _would _be… if you could actually hit me..." She finished, her expression turning flat.

Robin laughed heartily at that. The Earthbender had obviously learnt a lot from the spectacle sport that was the Earth Rumble, because while Yama's fighting style gave her some difficulty, she sure as hell had her taunting skills to fall back on, her insults had been deep and varied, and had succeeded in the purpose of making Yama so livid that he couldn't see through Toph's strategy.

Yama launched himself upwards, spinning in mid-air before launching into a kick.

Toph hesitated slightly as the spinning made it difficult to pinpoint his exact trajectory, however Yama, in a blind rage, and not knowing of the _actual_ blindness that was keeping his current position hard to guess, still ended up yelling out as he attacked, giving the girl all she needed.

"Kick Mountain!" Toph carefully noted the location of the source of that sound as She ran forward, before changing her stance.

Yama landed left leg first, with a thunderous crunch, the ground sagging beneath him, before turning to see his target, unscathed, at the centre of the clearing. She had slid beneath him while he was airborne, slight grazes were visible on her knees, as if to demonstrate the point.

Even in his angered state, he was able to suddenly note something, 'she's been making a point staying away from the centre of the clearing. Even when it put her closer to the line of fire, why would she suddenly change?' he scanned the battlefield.

"Finally realizing it?" Toph sneered. "Because it's probably too late now, just saying."

"What are you planning?!" Yama yelled, only confused at what he was seeing.

Robin watched in interest, while there were several fairly shallow craters scattered around the clearing, there were seven craters running around the clearing, they were fairly deeper than the others, formed by multiple impacts on the same spot, and… they formed a nearly-perfect circle, which Toph was now standing at the centre of.

"Nevermind! It doesn't matter, because I'll kill you before you accomplish it!" Yama yelled, dismissing his own question. In a new development he pulled a large sash from somewhere under his clothing, A sash which was covered with several dials on one side, he threw the sash over his shoulder, the dials pointing outwards. Then he charged.

"Axe Mountain!" He charged, aiming to slam his dial-coated stomach down where Toph was standing.

"Perfect." Toph smirked before leaping backwards quickly clearing the impact by some distance as her landing was simultaneous to Yama hitting the ground.

Yama had designed his Axe Mountain attack carefully, a multiple use attack of extraordinary power, 10 impact dials, every alternating one being charged, the other 5, not. The target would be hit by 5 impact dials, half the power of a reject dial, force which would be excessively lethal. The other 5, would be simultaneously charged by the same impact, allowing the process to be repeated.

However, while he had occasionally missed a target with the attack, he had never had _this_ happen, from the moment of impact, something was severely wrong, and before he knew it, he was buried up to the highest one of his several chins in rock. Utterly perplexed by the turn of events, he looked towards the girl he had been fighting.

Toph Had taken her chance, the second Yama had hit the ground, which to his surprise; offered far less resistance than he thought it would, she had attacked. She had closed the top layer of Earth back up around him, but also had done something else.

Robin was amazed. She knew that Toph was powerful, but the strategy here was also surprisingly clever, the Archaeologist had seen what Yama had not. When he impacted, he had broken a thin layer of soil, and immediately fallen into a pre-prepared, deep, dark pit hollowed out in the ground. The walls of the pit were not like the soil and rock above, this was compressed rock, extremely dense, this dense stone had promptly moved forth and locked in on him. Toph had been digging that hole throughout the entire battle. She had been making him attack in that circle, to keep him away from where she had been laying her trap. Yama had been so concerned with focusing on Toph, that he wasn't paying attention to what _she_ had been focusing on.

Yama, impact dials rendered unusable by his current position, was well and truly stuck. all of his considerable height and weight counting for nothing if he couldn't get the momentum to make his mass count.

Toph advanced, cracking her knuckles.

"Mercy… Please!" Yama gasped. The compression of the stone surrounding him was too dense, he couldn't breathe properly.

"I may have done it." Toph told him. "I may have offered you mercy, but not now."

"w..Why?" Yama pleaded. "Is it…because of the ruins? I'm sorry! I've…seen the error…of my ways!"

"I really don't give a crap about historical stuff…" Toph stopped in front of him; even just his head was almost the same height as her. "But… she does." Toph said, pointing to Robin. "And you made me break my word to her." Toph raised and bent her right arm out in front of her, her forearm parallel to her chest.

Yama could do nothing but watch as dozens of large chunks of soil and rock rose up around the girl before they started to shrink, 'no,' Yama realized 'they aren't shrinking, they're compressing!'

Toph closed her right fist, summoning the shards of compressed rock to surround her arm like a gauntlet, from her fingertips to just below her elbow.

"Make sure to mention to your God…" Toph said ominously as she cocked back her fist. "that you were beaten, by a 13 year old blind girl." She finished with a smirk.

"No… don't do it!" Yama pleaded, tears falling from his eyes before the last sentence really rung in his ears. "Wait, you're blin-" his question ended unfinished, as Toph's fist slammed into his face at blistering pace, enhanced as she bent the rocks to propel her arm faster and harder. She heard and felt a crunch, which she assumed was Yama's nose, maybe his jaw, or a cheekbone. It turned out she was right on all three counts, but had also missed one other thing.

* * *

xXx

"That Vearth girl… she… " Aisa said, gasping slightly.

"Toph?" Katara asked, her eyes widening in shock and fear, she saw only one of those emotions written on Aisa's face,

"She defeated Yama!" Aisa delivered, surprised.

While Katara clutched a hand to her chest in relief, Nami asked who Yama was, finding out that he was Enel's chief enforcer, technically one step below the priests, But more lethal than two of them, outclassing Satori due to physicality and the fact that he possessed a greater killer instinct, and surpassing Gedatsu by intelligence.

"She beat someone stronger than Satori?" Katara asked, genuinely surprised.

"Not definitely stronger." Aisa said, letting an odd grin onto her face "But Yama's hurt or killed more of my people than Satori and Gedatsu put together. I'm gonna shake…Toph was it?" Nami nodded to the question. "Yeah, I'm gonna shake Toph's hand if I see her, that bastard deserved it."

Katara and Nami exchanged nervous glances, they were beginning to see what an ability like Mantra, the ability to perceive the moment of someone's death like that, could do to a child's mind.

* * *

xXx

Robin walked forward from the edge of the clearing, clapping all the way. "Nicely done Toph." Toph had impressed her thoroughly by her ability to adapt. Yama was not perhaps her ideal opponent, just for his acrobatic tendencies.

Toph looked toward Robin, an odd grin on her face as she slowly pulled her arm back from the bloodied, unconscious face of her opponent. "Nothing to worry about, it would take someone way stronger than that to put me down."

"Are you alright?" Robin noted that Toph's voice sounded oddly pained.

"Fine…" Toph let out a noticeable whimper in spite of her words, she started to let the earth fall from her arm, starting at the elbow. "I just… may or may not have broken every bone in my hand, that's all." Toph tried to swallow down the sudden signals of agonizing pain shooting up her right arm but it was in vain, as her eyes started to water, if only slightly. In spite of this, she never let the smirk fall from her face at all.

'With her power it's easy to forget that she's still so young.' Robin noted with a bittersweet smile on her face. "Come here, I'm not within miles of a Doctor's skill level, but I know some medical basics."

Toph walked over begrudgingly, offering her hand for a kneeling Robin to begin patching it up.

"I'm sorry." The Earthbender said suddenly, "about the ruins." She then clarified, looking suddenly distant as she turned her head towards the remnants of the mural that Yama had hammered her through.

"It's no big deal, Toph." Robin offered, despite her best efforts she couldn't keep the slight twinge, a feeling of loss, from entering her voice, as she busied her hands with checking over Toph's.

"It is a big deal." Toph's voice dropped. "You had faith in me…and I blew it." the girl wasn't crying, but her voice was subdued, resigned.

"I did have faith in you." Robin said with a smile. "And you came through completely. You beat him and you lured him away from most of the ruins at the same time."

"I know but..." Toph's low voice wavered heavily. She HATED this feeling. The feeling of being underestimated was one she was used to, it hurt sometimes, but she could cope. What she could not cope with, was not being able to meet people's estimations, the feeling of letting people down despite her best efforts. that was when she felt truly handicapped.

Seeing that Toph didn't quite respond to her last attempt, Robin tried a new tactic, "You need to learn to laugh when you're sad." The archaeologist said at last. Toph noted an odd undertone to her voice, but disregarded it.

"Laugh when I'm in pain? I'd look like an idiot!" despite her words Toph felt a smile pulling on her face at the oddity of what she had just been told.

"No you wouldn't." Robin stated flatly. "Ok, maybe slightly, depending on your company people might assume you're insane." At that, both of them looked at each other, expressions flat, Robin still kneeling so that she was level with Toph's face. Moments of silence passed.

"Katara would blame you for my new-found 'insanity' and kick your ass." Toph theorized suddenly. simultaneously both of them burst into laughter. They continued until Toph broke the mood again, no longer sad, but seemingly reflective.

"You really had faith in me to beat that guy?" she asked, her voice low.

"Completely." Robin replied simply, before being shocked as Toph her pulled into a hug.

While Toph's spirits rose, Robin was contemplating…

20 years at sea, and no-one had ever warmed up to her as fast as the Straw-Hats, to them, with the exception of Katara, and maybe Zoro, whom she couldn't figure out, she was like one of the family, Toph made that clear to her, would she finally be able to just settle with a crew? To loosen the noose that had been tightening around her neck since she was 8 years old? It seemed too good to be true…

Ending the hug quickly, Robin did her best to repair the damage to Toph's hand, which wasn't as bad as first thought; all it required was two splints for her two broken fingers. Toph made minimal fuss over the injuries now; while they had been painful she had received worse. No broken bone would ever compare to burn wounds in her opinion. Toph then took a moment to consider something, out of all the physical injuries she had ever received, the one which stood out as both the most painful and debilitating, was the only injury that had inflicted upon her by someone who was technically an ally, she never did get revenge against Zuko for burning her feet.

Robin did her best; she had only picked up the bare minimum of first aid on her time out on the ocean, she didn't know much about cleaning cuts or soothing bruises, injuries which were too trivial to be essential survival knowledge, but she could set a broken bone back on track at least.

"Can you feel anyone nearby?" Robin asked after receiving Toph's assurances that she would try to avoid using her injured hand.

"Nope, there's too much of that solid cloud around." Toph replied. And Robin confirmed with a nod.

"Onward I guess, the Ruins are made of stone, so you should be able to see your way inside them."

"That's good."

"But like you said, there's lots of solid cloud around, so you'll probably need my help with that."

"That's bad."

"But once we get past that, we should be fine."

"That's good."

"Stop that."

"No."

* * *

xXx

For the few actual denizens of Upper Yard, certain things could occasionally get awkward, the island had very few notable landmarks, at least at ground level. There was always one thing that aided their navigation however, rising high into the atmosphere from its roots on the western side of the forest, into the clouds above the clouds was a massive plant, a beanstalk, spanning hundreds of metres in height, and dozens of metres in circumference. It was referred to, as Giant Jack.

At the foot of this odd plant stood another oddity, an odd brown creature, antlers, a blue nose, red shorts and a pink top hat? Definitely not your average Fauna.

Chopper scanned up and down the Beanstalk, he was trying to work up the courage to climb it, his incentive for doing so being that he thought the city of gold lay atop the solid cloud higher up the massive plant, this incentive was about to be reinforced by another one.

"There! I've found you!" an excited voice emanated from behind Chopper while a hand found its way to his shoulder.

The reaction was instantaneous, as whoever had placed the hand on the reindeer's shoulder, was promptly sent flying back as Chopper transformed into his quadripedal form, and started running _up_ the beanstalk, screaming in terror.

"Chopper! Calm down! It's me!" Zuko yelled up the Beanstalk after his fleeing crewmate to no response, before realizing something. "Wait, is he _Running? _is he running _VERTICALLY?" _ Zuko could only stare in wonder at the odd powers which a sense of fear seemed to grant the Reindeer, then, after Chopper had disappeared from view into the solid cloud canopy above, he sighed, and began to climb after him.

"You'd think… what with being in a pirate crew and all…" Zuko ran an inner-monologue as he climbed, panting with effort due to the steepness of the plant and the injuries he was bearing. "…that he'd be a little bit…braver."

* * *

xXx

It was a rare occurrence for a gathering of people, especially a gathering as diverse as the people who currently resided at the edge of Upper Yard's forests, to be completely of one mindset. Alas extreme circumstances had a habit of causing such things. On board the Going Merry, Katara stood alongside Conis and Pagaya, staring in horror at the sight before them, just below them, sat low on Nami's waver, Nami and Aisa were mirroring this action.

Indeed, there weren't many other reactions one could have to seeing what was in front of them, A gigantic, green snake, the length of its body being beyond perception, the girth of which, being astonishing. if the creature wanted to, it could easily claim the boat before it as its next meal.

Everyone assembled could only stand and watch, not wanting to do something that might cause the beast to rampage, however, they were not the only people present, there was one more, decidedly closer, so to speak, and he, unseen, and unbeknownst to those who were not actually _inside_ the beast, was not aware of this tentative pact.

Without warning, the snake started lashing its body wildly, seemingly in pain.

"Hang on Aisa, we're getting out of here!" Nami yelled out to the girl who stood behind her on the waver, before applying the throttle, barely evading the lashing tail of the snake. In her efforts to avoid being smashed by the creature's erratic movements however, Nami was forced to steer the waver back into the forest, the snake, for a reason only known to itself, attempted to pursue them, only causing them to go faster in desperation.

"Darn, they might need my help, Conis, can you look after Sanji and Usopp for a while?" Katara asked as she threw two straps with water-skins attached over her shoulder. "They're in no danger, just try to make sure they don't do anything reckless."

"I will." Conis assured eager to move past the rocky base which their temporary alliance had originally been established upon. "Are you going to be okay on your own?"

"I'm going to have to be, aren't I?" Katara pointed out with a smile, Conis, seeing the logic of that statement merely nodded. "Pagaya, you have that dial that makes clouds right?" Katara asked, suddenly having an idea.

"Yes, I do." Pagaya fished around in his pocket for a moment, "Here, just point away and press the apex. Are you going to take the Crow or our Waver?" Pagaya gestured down towards the two wavers that remained now that Nami had taken hers.

"I would, if I wasn't going alone." Katara considered briefly. "I have my own method, and it's probably faster." With that said, she pointed the dial outward towards where she had last seen Nami, trusting that she would easily be able to follow the snake's trail. A milky jet of the liquid cloud fired off, defying gravity as it lingered in the air. Katara was forced to concede, while this island was a complete totalitarian hell-hole, these dials were just incredible, both practical, and awe-inspiring.

Without a word, the waterbender leapt up, making to jump on the stream.

"Wait that's not-" Pagaya moved to warn the girl, thinking that she had made an oversight regarding the cloud. 'This cloud has the properties of a liquid, not a solid!'

He was quickly proven to be mistaken about her intentions, as in tandem with Katara's feet making contact with the ice, she had made motions with her arms, to weave some of the cloud from her immediate vicinity into a flat, shallow, pointed board, weaved from ice. Quick as a flash, she landed on the ice-board, then using her waterbending, she propelled it forwards along the stream, kicking up a trail of cloud behind her.

"Oh, that's waterbending!" Conis exclaimed.

"Look's handy." Pagaya said simply.

* * *

xXx

Katara knew that she would need to move quickly as she followed the debris left in the snake's path, the Snake was lightning fast despite its speed, and if it truly was hungry, then it'd be at full pace, trying to outclass Nami's waver.

"I'm coming Nami! Hold on!"

* * *

**xXx**

**A/N ****Boom, that's another chapter out of the way, can't really say how many more chapters Skypiea will take, somewhere between 3 and 5 to my best estimate, I am kind of eager to get it out of the way, because unfortunately it's the one place where you can't really put too many of your own plot ideas into action, it's a good arc, the dials and the fights, everything is wonderfully creative, but there's that sense that it's kind of isolated from the rest of the One Piece world. Either way, I've got decent plans for the end of Skypiea, and big plans for after Skypiea.**

**In other notes, Peter Jackson has once again made me his bitch with another finely crafted adventure to middle earth, but I won't bore you with that too much, saying that a Peter Jackson LOTR/Hobbit film is great is like saying "the sky is blue" at this point. Just know this, for LOTR fans, I may have a LOTR crossover forming in my mind.**

**Sorry if anyone felt that Toph was maybe a touch too sensitive in that conversation with Robin, I'm still trying to get her character down, because she's a tough but interesting nut to crack, a good balance of both untouchable badassery, and heightened insecurities.**

**I will admit that I haven't done nearly enough with Katara yet, but honestly, I'm gonna sound like a biased bastard here, she's just not as interesting as Zuko and Toph are. She's a good character, don't get me wrong, but there's not as much room to manoeuvre with her in terms of writing, regardless, I will be trying to improve in that regard.**

**Haven't really got anything more to say, but I hope you enjoyed the chapter, please leave a review, whether negative or positive I'd like to hear your thoughts.**


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